Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by thebean11 1459 days ago
Short term for treasuries is generally considered <= 1 year, BSV is only 1 to 5 years.

I just looked it up, Circle says they only hold treasures that mature in <= 3 months, so yeah I think even 6.5% is a massive overestimate to how volatile their treasury portfolio is..probably more like <1% which is easy to cover if they just hold a tiny bit of the deposits in cash..
1 comments
dragontamer 1459 days ago
> Short term for treasuries is generally considered <= 1 year, BSV is only 1 to 5 years.

BSV is literally named "Vanguard Short-Term Bond ETF".

That being said, the only "standardized" terms I'm aware of are Bills (less than 1 year), bonds (greater than 10 years), and Notes (1 to 10 years).

In any case, it is clear that BSV is considered short-term by Vanguard and its investors. So I'm more than willing to believe in Vanguard's language over yours.

link
thebean11 1459 days ago
haha, ok, so now we're just quibbling over the definition of short term instead of discussing the concrete question of how volatile USDC's treasuries are? Just replace instances of "short term" with <= 3 months, now are we in agreement?

My point is that your 10% figure is not applicable to the treasuries Circle claims to hold. You can call them whatever you want.

link
dragontamer 1459 days ago
The Fed is about to raise rates by 0.75% (estimated, maybe 0.5% to 1%) this week.

What do you think will happen to the value of all those treasuries? Even short term ones will decline in value. Not only because of the actual rate increase, but also over the expectation of future rate increases to clamp down on inflation.

10% drop? Probably not. But any drop in price followed by a bankrun would end up in insolvency.

link
thebean11 1459 days ago
For a 3 month treasury the drop will be tiny, like less than 1% tiny. It's would be easy to cover during a "bank run" given that (a) they hold some portion of deposits in cash anyway and (b) they've been earning interest on these deposits for years now. That’s my whole point..do you disagree?
link
dragontamer 1457 days ago
Look man, I've lived through 2007 / 2008 when the money market funds broke the buck.

I know that even a portfolio consisting of nearly exclusively treasuries can still decline in value. That's all I'm saying. Banks, even with their high quality debt instruments, aren't immune to the effects of a bank run.

The value of those short term notes still climbs up and down daily on the market. With a big enough decline, issues can arise.

link