[droffel]

Given that the 8.6% return is contingent on those funds being loaned out to third parties in a manner that involves risk (like margin trading), I am highly skeptical of their ability to not lose your money on the timeline of a decade. The trustworthiness of Blockfi doesn't matter if they mess up and end up loaning money to someone who ends up unable to pay the bill - and the person on the hook if the borrower does not pay is the lender of the capital. Not Blockfi. Why do you think the interest rates are so juicy?

If it was as safe as you seem to think it is, why didn't they just pony up their own money? 8.6% is far above any standard investment vehicle at the moment. For a safe investment, it's free money!

[SailingSperm]

The thing is though that most all of these crypto lending platforms only offer over collateralized loans, so the risk of them being screwed over by lack of payment from the person taking the loan is negligible. Meaning If I want to lend $100 worth of USDC I must give $200 as collateral worth of BTC to get the loan. Where if that $200 worth of BTC drops to a worth of $100, it's liquidated, paying off your loan, leaving the lender with no outstanding loan and the loan taker with the $100 worth of USDC still, but no longer their BTC. (this would trigger a Capital gains event too, as the BTC was effectively sold.)

These types of loans of course aren't useful for most people in the traditional sense where somebody needs access to money they don't have. These are mostly for 2 cases: 1) Exposure to other crypto when you think both your collatoral and the crpyto you want to be lent will both be worth more. SO you borrow $100 worth of USDC, give $200 BTC as collatoral, use the $100 USDC to buy $100 worth of ETH. SO if after a month ETH and BTC have gone up, you can sell enough to pay the $100 USDC loan and keep the profit.

2) Access to illiquid capital. If you have $1 million of BTC but don't want to sell it and trigger a capital gains event, you use that as temporary collateral to get access to something else, thus never selling your current crpyto holdings (unless they fall below the liquidate threshold of the loan)

I should say too, using these methods still has counter party risk regardless.

[menzoic]

One extra detail. The liquidation price isn't equal to the loan principal, it's higher. So in your example $100 USDC loan with $200 BTC collateral will have the BTC sold once the value drops to $150 and the remaining BTC if any is returned. This is to reduce the chances of the price dropping below the principal before liquidation is complete.

[lottin]

The reason they require so much collateral is because the value of the collateral is highly correlated with the value of the investment, since both the investment and the collateral are in the form of crypto-assets, and crypto-asset prices tend to move together. This means, in the event of a crash in the crypto market, the probability of incurring losses from such a loan would not be negligible.

Then there's also foreign exchange risk. The return on these loans is quoted in terms of the currency the debt is denominated in, whereas what the investor cares about is the return of the investment in terms of their local currency. This is the same situation that an investor would face if they decided to buy Argentine bonds, which pay over 20% annually in pesos. The return that they would get in their local currency would likely be much smaller. It could even be negative.

[fastball]

Thank you! I've been trying for years to get someone to explain to me how DeFi loans make any sense whatsoever when they are all so over-collateralized. Your explanation helped put the pieces together a little bit. I still don't understand how the unit economics make much sense, but yeah.

[dannyw]

Dollar yields in the crypto universe have forever been higher. I've consistently got 12-25% per year from 2015 using exchanges like Bitfinex and haven't lost a single dollar.

Why isn't it arbitrated away? Because institutions and market makers don't trust crypto. When they do, I'm sure it'll go as low as rest of market rates.

[G3rn0ti]

One of the reasons why the yields are higher for stable coins is they are not bound by central banks‘ interest rates. This is especially true for purely synthetic stable coins (DAI, sUSD, sEUR) because they don’t even need to be backed by the underlying asset.

The other reason is they cut the middle man between a creditor and debtor i.e. banks.

If banks started to sell financial products based on liquidity pools, they had a hard time to compete with places like compound or aave. However, they would set themselves free of the federal fund rate and therefore they could actually provide higher rates to their customers.

So basically, rates would be rising everywhere.

[lottin]

The fact that the yields are higher for stablecoins simply means borrowers of stable coins are paying more to borrow stablecoins than they would if the borrowed the underlying currency instead. It has nothing to do with middlemens or central banks's interest rates.

[G3rn0ti]

So why can’t banks provide higher yields with simple savings accounts? If it’s got nothing to do with federal fund rates or middle men?

Here in Europe banks are entering an existential crisis as the ECB maintains zero and negative interest rates (of course, this is simplified as there are actually several different federal funds). Banks can’t finance their business anymore. This led to increasing bank fees, bank mergers and basically bad service for their customers including no interest paid on savings.

Defi will sweep away the banking market on the long run if central banks keep doing their lax monetary policy for much longer.

[tonfa]

> So why can’t banks provide higher yields with simple savings accounts? If it’s got nothing to do with federal fund rates or middle men?

Because banks are regulated (to avoid systemic risks), so they need to balance deposits with risk free loans (or discounting the riskier loans with extra capital).

> Defi will sweep away the banking market on the long run if central banks keep doing their lax monetary policy for much longer.

By definition if they provide higher yields, this should be because they are riskier. (It might be a non-obvious risk, e.g. liquidity risk due to lack of lender of last resort).

[G3rn0ti]

> they need to balance deposits with risk free loans

You mean "reserves". This is the reserve requirement of banks which they need to hold for deposits. These reserves are held by their responsible central bank. Which they need to pay for in the Euro zone (that's what it means federal fund rates being negative). So this gets me back to my initial point: Banks depend on the federal fund rates. DeFi systems do not.

But I agree with you, higher yields do reflect higher risks. Of course, depositing money in DeFi protocols is still riskier than leaving it on your bank. But bringing money to your bank means you're so risk averse you're willing to lose money for keeping your money. At least inside the Euro zone, currently.

[lottin]

> So why can’t banks provide higher yields with simple savings accounts?

Because yield is the price that borrowers pay for borrowing funds. When there are a lot of funds available for borrowing and not many people wanting to borrow yields will fall. There is just nothing central banks or commercial banks can do to raise yields if there is little demand for loans.

[G3rn0ti]

> There is just nothing central banks or commercial banks can do to raise yields if there is little demand for loans.

I am sorry but I think you've got this completely the wrong way. The demand for loans did not shrink in the last couple of years: Look at the housing prices (including the infamously high rents) and the volume of credits people burden themselves with. Rather, the amount of liquidity (i.e. money) circulating around has increased significantly. This pushed interest rates down to a minimum. And why is that so? It's because central banks are flooding the economy with money for years. So it is well within their power to change that. But it won't be nice for many parts of our inflated economies ...

[menzoic]

If it goes as low as the rest of market rates then what's the advantage? I think it'll stay higher.