75 karma · joined May 27, 2015
To answer GPs question, legit exchanges do spend a lot of money and effort on keeping user's assets secure so it's maybe not as easy as it seems. But in the case of FTX, I totally agree. FTX was like 2nd or 3rd highest volume exchange and could have been a highly profitable business on it's own. Only SBF knows the answer to why that wasn't enough.
1. borrow Tether
2. swap it for USDC (or stablecoin of choice)
3. wait for Tether to crash
4. pay off your Tether loan at a fraction of its original value
risk is that your tether loan will be accruing interest (currently 1.4%) so if it doesn't crash or takes too long to crash you could be liquidated.Do you have any data to back this claim?
I think they've set up a system that incentivizes long term storage (and possibly a better setup than IPFS) but theres no way in hell they can make a guarantee for more than a few years at best.
After explaining improvements to this specific issue, it still feels like way too much friction for the average person to deal with. I think there will be more improvements as time goes on but maybe that's just the cost of doing self-custody. In the end, I guess it's up to the individual to decide whether it's worth it or not.
1. borrows a large amount of money
2. use the large amount of money to do arbitrage
3. pays back the large amount of money plus any fees
4. keep profits
and it does so "atomically", so if you can't repay the loan then the transaction fails and the whole thing never happened. or you could lose money if the transaction is successful but the trade is not profitable.like I said, I'm not an expert so someone correct me if I'm wrong
The loans aren't interest free, they have a variable rate determined by supply and demand. For USDC its been pretty steady around 3%. There was a day or two last year where it spiked to 40% when Justin Sun removed billions of his capital.
In response to wire transfer, I was more complaining about having to be at a physical bank branch to do it. Not sure if that is unusual either.
edit: Just remembered that normally I wouldn't have to physically go to the bank. I had to do so to make sure it arrived in time for the signing. I think they told me it would take a day or two if I did it online/over phone? But being there in person they said it would "probably" arrive in a couple hours
I'm not sure if my wire transfer experience is uniquely bad, but I had to do a wire transfer when I made a down payment on my house last year. To do this I had to drive to a physical bank location, sign some papers, and then they told me it will probably arrive within a couple hours.
Google says the bank I use is 6th largest in the US so maybe bigger banks are better but I'm guessing my experience is not an outlier.
edit: oh also forgot to mention wire transfer limits. I don't know the exact limit is for my bank but I'm guessing it's under the amount I transferred. I'm guessing this would mean multiple trips to a physical bank branch in the year 2022
Anyways, an example of what I would use stablecoins for: I expect the price of $TOKEN to go down so I swap it for USDC. While I'm waiting for $TOKEN price to go down I lend my USDC on Aave for ~3% APY (and yes, there is smart contract risk here but I chose Aave in my example for that reason). When $TOKEN price drops enough I swap the USDC back for $TOKEN.
Another situation: I want to send my family member money to help with down payment on a house. I don't want to sell $TOKEN because I think the price will go up, so instead I lend $TOKEN on Aave and borrow stablecoins. I send stablecoins to family member (worth noting this would be difficult to do in FIAT due to the amount) and when he pays me back I can then withdraw my $TOKEN.
One more: I just sold a jpeg and want to make sure I have enough cash to pay taxes next year. Instead of hoping my $TOKEN price will stay same or go up I sell some for USDC to cover taxes
I think I felt compelled to mention that people send it anyway because it's good behavior and not all scams/crimes people say it is. In general I think the royalty thing is just one nice bonus of using smart contracts
I can talk more about how the system works if you are interested, but some established generative artists have created projects on their platform and have made more than they could before web3.
Not sure what you mean by the second question
If we are talking ETH, it's possible to use zero knowledge proofs to send money and make it impossible to trace back to the source (see https://tornado.cash/). This also has some limitations, like you wouldn't be able to tornado 8 figures worth of ETH but certainly better than an OTC deal. It's also possible that the off-ramp exchanges could block any ETH that was sent through tornado. This gets hairy pretty quickly though, as the tornado ETH could easily be wash traded or mixed. Or it could be used legitimately, swapped for stablecoins, etc.