Me too. I'm looking into shorting it on Kraken but I am not quite sure how it would work because it would be delisted before it went to 0 possibly and I am not quite sure how that would work.
There is simply too much counter-party risk. If the wheels fall off the Tether bus, they're going to take Kraken down with it, and you just won't get paid. Plus you're going to have to post collateral for your short position, which simply opens you up to even more loss potential.
tr0lly seems to think the market is pricing in a 50% chance of a total systemic collapse on a 1 year time horizon by working backwards from the 2% per month contango on CME futures [1].
The argument there starts from bitcoin futures being worth more than bitcoin today. What's wrong with the simple explanation that people expect the price of bitcoin to rise?
This is actually covered in the write-up but the answer is arbitrage.
In a perfect world, I'd simply short-sell the future at a 2% premium over the spot price, then I'd buy a bitcoin on the open market. This pushes the price of Bitcoin up and the price of the future down. The gap closes to roughly zero, an I get 2% for my service.
The reason that people don't take the 20%/year arb is that they are taking arbs that pay more than 20%/year.
An additional reason, at some venues, is that the venue does not allow you to use 1 BTC to fully collateralize 1 short BTC future. At those venues, if you do this trade and the price of BTC goes up, you begin to pay interest to borrow dollars for your paper loss on the futures half of the trade.
Edit: for CME in particular, I don't know, but I sort of expect that you cannot post collateral in crypto.
If USDT implodes to $0 then you'll have nothing to pay back.
You can even deposit the USDC to, say, Yearn and cancel out your interest expense.
Of course, I do not expect USDT imploding anytime soon, so don't do this. Although it's often the preferred stablecoin to borrow because when it does implode, you will be lucky (assuming it goes under the peg).
Oh, this is perfect, I'm going to do this with 100k. Also, yeah it is shorting, but it's honestly less convoluted than how I have to do it on Kraken. + I get profits off staking.
Edit, did it with $500 as a test, I am arbitraging 0.5% as I took the tether I borrowed, turned it. into USDC and staked it. I am getting paid 0.5% to short Tether :O
But there is no lending/borrowing market or a decentralized exchange on Stellar. Besides, when you deposit USDC to Compound Finance you will earn interest plus COMP tokens that can cover your gas fees.
Anyways, there may be several competing options coming in the future, but Stellar is just not it.
All of the above exchange links that I've visited required account registration and login, which means that they are not decentralized. For the celsius, you have to download an app on your phone. Ewwww. Whatever. Claiming to be decentralized and then requiring signup is dishonest.
It looks like there is not not much liquidity. Also, the only type of exchange supported is "Limit Order", which is also cumbersome to use on a blockchain, and you would probably prefer Automated Market Maker (AMM) type exchanges once you experience them. (You can perform all the steps I've outlined in a single transaction for example)
Also, it looks like that all the assets on stellar are custodial. There are no non-custodial stablecoins for example.
> Claiming to be decentralized and then requiring signup is dishonest.
I find it hard to believe that you honestly don't understand the difference between an independently developed client and the decentralized exchange which it connects to.
> you would probably prefer Automated Market Maker (AMM)
See Kelp above.
> There are no non-custodial stablecoins
This subthread started with your recommendation of USDC, a custodial stablecoin...
…which, lest we forget, went live on Stellaräs decentralized exchange this month:
Totally, just a minor quibble, they don't have audits, they have attestations. That's not the same thing, it's much less detailed. I'm not particularly worried about the existence of their backing assets, however, it's just worth noting.
I was referring to the Circle entity in the event of a wheels-come-off situation.
USDC is an example, it's not necessary that you use USDC, there are a few other currencies that can be used for collateral and swapped in to while you wait. Let's be clear: "Do not do this" means do not do this in whatever variation.
Why do you think Kraken would be in a position to pay you out if Tether goes under? Even the CME contract becomes sketchy when you’re talking about a meltdown at this scale—it’s priced off these exchanges. If they start experiencing edge case behaviour, prices could crash or multiply erratically.
If you want to play this, it would likely involve a more sophisticated bet on exposed public companies and/or credits, or a simple bet with a trusted counterparty.
Hence the 2% per month contango on a cash-settled futures contract which is practically unheard of.
In theory you should be able to arbitrage by purchasing a bitcoin and shorting the futures contract to collect that sweet 2% per month. However in a wheels-fall-off situation, the price at USDT-only and insolvent USD exchanges could approach infinity, and since your real-world broker won't take your BTC as collateral, they'll simply liquidate you.
Appears arbitrageurs are willing to leave 2% per month on the table to avoid being strung up in the event the wheels fall off.
> In theory you should be able to arbitrage by purchasing a bitcoin and shorting the futures contract to collect that sweet 2% per month
Variation margin. Shorting the future requires you put up cash. If the price goes up, you have to put up more cash. One could hedge away part of this by holding Bitcoin and borrowing against it. But those lending channels are costly and not presently reliable.
TL; DR That 27% spread [1] includes more than just systemic risk.
Not entirely, right, shorting the future requires you put up margin. Current maintenance margin requirement is about $100,000 per contract, which covers 5 BTC, notionally $258,000.
Margin interest at the institutional level is 0.75% per year, so you're free to collateralize your position with something other than cash or bitcoin. You could have 1 short /BTCG1, collateralized by a portfolio of other investments, and buy BTC to cover at an exchange somewhere.
Yeah it's not risk free, but it's certainly not 27% per annum.
For stocks I agree, but here tether isn't ever going to go much above $1, right? So the downside of shorting is just that it ties up a lot of capital, right?
Counter-party risk is the issue. The only places you might be able to short for real dollars will require you post up collateral for your short. Then once the wheels fall off they'll declare bankruptcy and keep your collateral.
'declare bankruptcy' is optimistic. More likely is that they disappear completely/fake their own death in a weird jurisdiction/get killed by gangsters/go to prison for child porn, etc.
That means you’ll still be paying interest for whatever period you’re holding the position, which really isn’t that bad depending on the rates. However, not to detract from the thread I would think other concerns like market irrationality and delisting still applies.
I highly recommend not doing this - I was shocked to see this article because I'm surprised its _still_ rolling - 2 or 3 years ago I was in your spot, and I would have wasted a ton of money and acquired a much darker view of the world.
Much like TSLA, it'll be 10% of its size eventually, but who knows when or why, its teflon until it isn't.
Because Amazon has 1.2 million employees, $386.1 billion yearly revenue, and $20 billion yearly net income. Tesla has yearly revenue of $31.5 billion and net income of $721 million. Presumably people think that Tesla is priced for explosive growth, but Amazon has also been on a growth tear that shows no sign of stopping, so the basic premise that Tesla at less than 1/10th the revenue and 1/20th the net income is worth half as much as Amazon seems fishy.
You wouldn't have wasted much money. At one crypto venue, this trade costs you less than 1% per year to keep on and ties up only 5% of your collateral (assuming you are 1x short and don't push the "pay higher fees for more leverage" button)
I was briefly short USDT on Kraken but their fees for that were terrible, like 25% per annum. I'm not sure if there is a more reasonable way of doing it.
There is simply too much counter-party risk. If the wheels fall off the Tether bus, they're going to take Kraken down with it, and you just won't get paid. Plus you're going to have to post collateral for your short position, which simply opens you up to even more loss potential.
tr0lly seems to think the market is pricing in a 50% chance of a total systemic collapse on a 1 year time horizon by working backwards from the 2% per month contango on CME futures [1].
[1] http://www.tr0lly.com/bitcoin/bitcoins-overnight-collapse-pr...