Comment by smallmancontrov | Hacker News Reader

Comment by smallmancontrov | Hacker News Reader

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smallmancontrov

Yeah but after a series of Big Prints we finally managed to make an inflation spike, a run on Silicon Valley Bank, the US President openly contemplating dollar devaluation, "Sell America trade" working for the first time in 50 years, the marginal buyer of treasuries eliminating the last dove on the path to war, and precious metals whipping around like meme stocks. "Park the money in a USD money market at SVB" used to be not just OK, but universally agreed to be obviously OK, which had value of its own. Now it's just OK. Probably. I hope.

Will we see some pivots into bullshit crypto holding companies? Sure, but VC returns are notoriously lottery-ticket distributed and 0 is 0 however you get there. I'd hazard a bet that the number of otherwise-successful companies who die due to this policy rounds to 0, while the probability of an inflationary wrecking ball that wipes out an entire batch of otherwise promising startups in the absence of such a policy is... north of zero.

To be clear, I don't think this is due to a special property of crypto, just the flexibility to get away from USD in case of emergency.

EDIT: maybe 24/7 trading could be an argument. It would be a meme for the ages if a raft of startups survived because they were up hustling and grinding at 2AM when the boats hit the Taiwan Strait.

You’re describing an event that would wipe out the US economy and trying to protect against that with stable coins, or at least that’s the impression I’m getting.

If the US falls apart, your startup will too. No matter how well preserved your cash reserves are.

The US going to war or entering hyperinflation is probably at the bottom of most founders lists of existential worries. Not a risk to mitigate (it’s a risk you need to accept since there’s nothing you can do - worrying about it won’t help)

Also, worth mentioning that no one lost money with SVB’s collapse. One might argue it was an incredibly smart decision for YC to recommend people bank at SVB since if SVB goes under, virtually all LP’s and everyone in the VC community will go under too (too big to fail, so they won’t, or if they do, everyone else fails too — kind of like AWS us-east-1)

No one might have lost their money with the collapse of the banks but with the large amount of new money printed, the value of each dollar will continue to erode.

Inflation and hyper-inflation can wipe out debts with future money that's cheaper more easily in some ways. I forget where I had read or learned more about this in other countries that had experienced it.

Nah, hedging war is a meme, but I labeled it as such.

Startups that wanted to treasury in BTC or GLD, were told no, and were vindicated in hindsight are not a meme. Startups that were force-fed 10% inflation and a collapsing bank aren't a meme. That happened.

You can complain that it's irrational to hedge against these things which have been happening an awful lot lately, but you aren't the one who gets to decide. If an enterprising alternative VC is peeling away good founders by being flexible on this point, YC's option is to compete or let the deals go.

It probably costs you more than 10% of your time to avoid the 10% inflation.

> kind of like AWS us-east-1

is this the right comparison? us-east-1 goes down a lot to an extent because everything goes down at the same time, rather than as a collective need to stay up. its one of the worst AWS regions if what you care about is stability and up time. too big to fail does not add extra up time guarantees to that region

> the US President openly contemplating dollar devaluation

Why won’t the fed raise rates?

The fear is the loss of safe guards and independence of the Federal Reserve. Trump is actively trying to remove safe guards and independence that would allow the Federal Reserve to counteract anything like this. If for instance Trump wants to hold interest rates low regardless of what anyone is telling him, he wants that power[0][1].

The upcoming decision by the Supreme Court on case Trump v. Cook is about this very issue[2]

[0]: https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/29/economy/federal-reserve-indep...

[1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/why-the-federal-reserves...

[2]: https://hls.harvard.edu/today/will-the-federal-reserve-remai...

If they won’t raise rates for fear of losing independence it’s already over.

If Trump v. Cook is a loss for Trump, they won't be in fear of losing independence, as I understand it.

Which branch of government is the fed under?

None. As per the Federal Reserve Act it is an independent agency not under any branch of government.

Trump is trying to change that through judicial means, rather than purusing a legislative one. Dubious at best, but the Supreme Court as of late has not been reliable in upholding important precedent.

Trump v Cook is not upcoming it has been argued already

https://www.oyez.org/cases/2025/25A312

Edited! Though it was suppose to be written as upcoming decision, as yes the case was argued already but not ruled on

Love your writing style!

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