YC backed Stablegains invested everything in Terra | Hacker News Reader

YC backed Stablegains invested everything in Terra

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57 pointsgraeme25 comments

This seems like it was more or less just a straight-up scam. They told customers that they were investing their funds in a diversified set of stablecoins. They promised the customers they could not lose money because the stablecoins were all backed. They then put all of the money into Terra, an algorithmic stablecoin, which is not backed by anything.

Terra gave yields near 20%, but Stablegains gave 15%, so they were basically just skimming 5% off the top. I wonder if it will be possible to sue or even prosecute.

> which is not backed by anything.

I mean it's backed by an algorithm...but that's obviously worthless

Words like “backing” have specific meaning in the world of financial regulations. This use is wildly different from that meaning.

Doesn't stop the legions of commenters who will join discussions like these to proudly assert that the US dollar is "backed by" the US economy, the US military, etc.

What kind of algorithm is that anyway? return 1; ?

You can't simultaneously be stable while also gaining in value. Remember the golden rule of trading: in order for someone to sell an asset for a price, someone else must want to buy that asset for that same price. Luna continually going up must destabilize Terra. The trick is that you moved all the instability to one side of the equation, trying to pretend it's not there.

It's a scam on its very face because it's promising a stable, perpetual motion machine.

What in the world kind of due diligence process led to a "15% returns guaranteed" company getting venture capital funding? There's no way a knowledgeable investor could have not known this was a scam.

Crypto isn't for the knowledgeable investor.

https://archive.ph/2022.06.10-051656/https://blog.stablegain...

YC is delegitimizing itself by funding crypto startups at all. Textbook example of a solution in search of a problem.

   Guilt by association and a bad egg spoiling the bunch generalisation.

So are you going to stop using Stripe because they have a product using crypto?

Interestingly, is that why you continue to use Signal despite the fact it has a privacy-enhancing crypto wallet baked in used for aiding and hiding terrorists, extremists and scammers?

Signal's cryptocurrency relies on SGX for security IIRC. Please use Monero if you want to do crimes.

I’m sorry, but you need to open your eyes to a bigger world. There is real world billions of dollars of value flowing through these systems daily; and if you don’t think stablecoins are going to be heavily used for international trade and settlement — you will be very wrong in the not too distant future. Terra Luna failure was a big disappointment and a punch to gut for most of this space, it sucked a lot of air out of the room when it imploded. Many a smarter man than I had large sums floating in this; however, to dismiss the entire space is just foolishness. One can settle tens of millions of dollars of value trivially in any internet connected jurisdiction right here right now on a dozen blockchains, how is that not a game changer for international trade and finance. This is not fantasy.

Why would they be used for international trade and settlement? SWIFT and friends seem to work quite well - unless you need to avoid sanctions of course.

Far more expensive and slower. Regulated stablecoins are no good for sanction bypass hacks as they can be frozen, anyway.

You must not know many people in the safe asset business. The overwhelming goal is to NOT lose money. Sure faster settlement times would be nice but never at the cost of increased risk. That would entirely defeat the purpose of it being a safe asset.

Because most of the reasons modern settlement is T+2 and cross jurisdiction trading is extremely complex is about regulations in those jurisdictions and various forms of counter party risk mitigation.

Crypto currencies and equities largely avoid this by not enforcing or following many of the regulations that banks and brokerages need to follow for similar financial instruments.

So unfortunately if you understand how settlement happens today in detail, you will probably come to the conclusion that once crypto versions of these assets are regulated in an identical fashion, settlement will look much as it does today, just using a different technology to record events.

> One can settle tens of millions of dollars of value trivially

How many people would you say need this kind of service regularly?

How is this even hard now?

A million+ dollar wire transfer works like just about any other; it’ll usually clear within 24 hours.

If you really believe that SWIFT provides an equivalent user experience to cryptocurrency, you are free to use that. Oh, your not free to use it? Lucky there is cryptocurrency!

24 hours on weekdays if you’re lucky. Under a minute on any blockchain.

Just because there is a lot of "value" does not make something ethical or the right thing to do. There is a lot of "value" in fossil fuels, crime, the slave trade etc. Fossil fuels are a big component of international trade. Value =/= correct, smart, or right. We have pillaged the planet delivering "value". Hyper capitalism with crypto is not a sustainable future direction. It just sounds like a grey goo scenario.

Bring it on, humanity had a good run.

Cancel! Cancel! Cancel!

You don't want to be caught supporting something illegitimate do you?

Genuinely didn’t know how to title this. Title is more than double the character limit. Feel free to edit

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