[PKop]

If you just sit in Tether sure, but the ecosystem of stablecoins gives you access to DeFi yield opportunities with much better "passive" interest than bank deposits or treasuries, so the bet is a little more sophisticated than dollar for dollar.

[ironlake]

Terra Luna offered some great DeFi yield opportunities.

Unrealistic yield is one of the hallmarks of a ponzi scheme. The DeFi yield opportunities require more money to flow in than to flow out.

Apple stock, for example, pays a dividend that is not dependent on more people buying Apple stock but on the company profits for the next quarter.

[SkyMarshal]

>The DeFi yield opportunities require more money to flow in than to flow out.

Not exactly. In DeFi they just give you newly printed tokens. That's the "yield". Why wait for money to flow in when you can instead print it at will.

[nradov]

Actually the DeFi yield opportunities are not any better than Treasuries on a risk-adjusted basis. You might not be familiar with the actual risk level, including counterparty risk. Some of the cryptocurrency grifters have intentionally obscured that issue.

[PKop]

Treasuries pay negative real yields, so I'm not sure there's any opportunity there. More of a guaranteed loss.

[blitzar]

Luna had a real negative yield as well

[runarberg]

I’m confused. Banks and credit unions pay interest on savings because they can loan or invest that money with higher yields then the interest they pay to the customer/member.

How exactly do cryptocurrencies finance their DeFi yields to their investors? The only way I can think of is with the money of future investors, but that is a pretty blatant Ponzi scheme.

[tyrfing]

Loans.

[runarberg]

Yeah, that still doesn’t make sense. If that were to be sustainable you would have charge higher interest on the loans then you give to savings. That means a customer has the potential of getting a loan in an alien currency which they’d have to sell to USD, and then buy some more of that alien currency to pay it back with much higher interest then if they would have just gone to a bank/credit union/loan agency.

These DeFi yields must be funded in other ways than just loans.

[tyrfing]

> If that were to be sustainable you would have charge higher interest on the loans then you give to savings.

Which is exactly how protocols like Compound work, although 'governance tokens' are also issued simply for using the system.

> These DeFi yields must be funded in other ways than just loans.

Which? DeFi stands for Decentralized Finance, which pretty much means the rules are easily available - as long as you talk about a specific example, not spherical cows.

[runarberg]

I’m sorry but I’m still confused. Who are the people taking these inconvenient, unoptimal and expensive loans, when they can get better and cheaper loans through traditional means? Something doesn’t smell right.

Also ‘governance tokens’? This smells like another term for “money from new users entering the system”. Which is precisely how Ponzi schemes work.

EDIT: I went on a little scouting mission on google (well DDG actually) to find out if I could borrow some USDT on the Compound and how much it would cost me. But I mostly came across articles explaining how you could make money by doing the opposite (buying Tether and lending it), and numerous dashboards with all sorts of hard to understand data with the prices of various cryptocurrencies and some rates I couldn’t understand. I suspect that the only people borrowing USDT are actually also speculators that are invested in the cryptocurrency market (perhaps they are trying to short it).

[tyrfing]

> Who are the people taking these inconvenient, unoptimal and expensive loans, when they can get better and cheaper loans through traditional means?

USDC is at 2.3% APR, USDT 3.78%. I think you'll find that most people cannot obtain unsecured loans that low, and the forms of collateral a bank will accept are much more limited. The biggest reason is also the reason why people like Elon Musk have massive loans: avoiding taxes on realized gains.

https://compound.finance/markets

> Also ‘governance tokens’? This smells like another term for “money from new users entering the system”. Which is precisely how Ponzi schemes work.

Sure, just like how "startups" are actually Ponzi schemes with early investors preying on the later ones. Same people owning it, too!

[lottin]

Why would anyone pay 30% interest on a loan, in an environment of negative interest rates?

[tyrfing]

Can you explain where the 30% number comes from?

[jazzyjackson]

> sophisticated

aka obfuscated

does the yield come from anywhere other than funds deposited by new users?

[PKop]

Interest on lending, and trading fees from liquidity pools. During a bear market in crypto certainly these yields will decline.

The 2 sources I mentioned above are essentially flows that accrue during the bull markets. It's not magic, when people want to long assets they borrow stables. If you lend into these markets you'll get the yield. With liquidity pools you can get some transaction fees even during market volatility and draw-downs, in the short term at least.

[jazzyjackson]

Am I to believe people are paying > 20% interest to borrow crypto ?

[mbg721]

I hope not, or else I'm missing out on a lucrative counter-position.

[tigershark]

No

[jfk13]

> ecosystem of stablecoins

"stable" coins... yes, that's been an interesting ecosystem lately.

> access to DeFi yield opportunities with much better "passive" interest than bank deposits or treasuries

Not to mention much greater risk of losing everything.

[muttantt]

The "DeFi yield opportunities" of today were the HYIP ponzis of years past.

[chinathrow]

Have you ever thought where that yield comes from?