Precisely. Provide stability in exchange of absorbing the risks from the underlying assets. It's what every bank could do, even without fractional reserve.
I've had my share of discussions with arcticbull, it's amazing how smart he can be when he wants and how clueless he makes himself to be when it comes to acknowledging the upside of crypto projects.
It's always a pleasure though! :) I certainly learn a lot from y'all.
I should say, I freely acknowledge I don't have all the answers - clueless in some cases even, to borrow a turn of phrase. I find crypto fascinating, like many folks, from a technical perspective. I remain unconvinced about it's practical real-world applications.
To back you up somewhat with a personal anecdote... I've been working in the blockchain World for about 8 years across crypto and enterprise blockchain as an engineer, researcher and more recently a product manager, and and have come to the conclusion that there are not really very many practical applications for crypto or enterprise blockchain.
For crypto, other than censorship resistance - which most people don't actually care about because they are lucky enough not to need it - it doesn't really offer anything useful. Most crypto projects are Rube Goldberg machines whereby the operators of these companies are re-hashing all the same things our ancestors did with money. Of course they are doing well at the moment because it's morphed into a get rich quick scheme. If there was no easy money to be made there would be little interest in it, just like there was back in 2010 when I started looking at Bitcoin.
Enterprise blockchain struggles because there's no actual need for blockchain elements like chains of provenance and smart contracts if the participants are fully identified and already have business relationships. "Blockchain" is a direct substitute for trusted third parties and good legal agreements and should only ever be used in circumstances where all other options are exhausted because the technology comes with so many bad trade-offs. Doesn't scale, very complicated, difficult to manage upgrades and versions, customers find it hard to understand, etc...
What's your view on stuff like Sia and Filecoin? I agree with you about the lack of actual use for stuff like Bitcoin etc but the storage cost aspect of those two is interesting for sure.
> I remain unconvinced about it's practical real-world applications.
When your idea of "real-world" is one where all people have access to stable, robust and functional institutions, it's no surprise that you don't see the necessity of alternatives.
Consider it a privilege. And I don't mean it in a derogatory way.
if that's only for 10k libertarian tribes, then I guess it does a good job. Unfortunately the nice hardware and electricity grid actually needs a society to build and maintain. And these are much more people thank 10k libertarians.
Just because it still pops up and noone responds to it at all. How many transactions can bitcoin handle nowadays? And how much energy does it consume again for that?!
The backing assets appear to be other stablecoins. I wonder what kind of interest they can make that 1) isnt incredibly risky, and 2) is legal in the US where they are based.
Buy US treasuries? Those rates are still positive (0.09% - 1.66%). Since the capital is essentially free even if you get a blended rate of return of say 0.2% that is still real money. As an example USDC has $5.1 billion dollars in outstanding tokens issued that's $10 million a year at 0.2% just to sit on it.
Sort of; that has a risk you haven't accounted for: borrowing long-term and lending short-term (or rather, no fixed term). This is the same kind of risk that absolutely savaged WeWork.
For instance, if we take your 0.2% blended rate estimate for what you can get for your capital, that's still a real yield of -1.8% accounting for inflation. Luckily that 2% inflation loss is born by your token holders, not you, however that creates a real incentive to exit the tokens once interest rates rise.
Let's say interest rates rise to 5% due to a financial recovery - back to where they were in 2010. Now, not only have your token holders lost 2% value for each year you've carried the T-bills, you have to discount the notes by 3.375% (vs the current market 1.625%) to liquidate them should your token holders decide to redeem and move into bonds themselves.
To liquidate them you have to pay the difference in coupon rates, so a mark to market loss of $172M. If we take your 0.2% blended rate as an offset, even over a 5 year window, that still represents a net loss of $122M.
Borrowing long and lending short works until it doesn't, then you can ask Mr. Neumann what happens.
I've had my share of discussions with arcticbull, it's amazing how smart he can be when he wants and how clueless he makes himself to be when it comes to acknowledging the upside of crypto projects.