It is an indian crypto exchange (lending) platform based in Singapore but focuses on india, as I remember it.
It is not as big as binance (indian version), wazirx, coindcx, zebpay but can be considered around position 7-8 in the list of indian crypto exchanges.
Users mainly used it for interest earning by lending their crypto to vauld.
Singapore went soft on debtors in 2017. Singapore now has US-style debtor in possession reorganization, like Chapter 11 in US law. So forcing Vauld into liquidation does not appear to still be an option.
All of these yield farms seem to reassure customers that everything is great, then the next week declare themselves insolvent. It seems that as soon as they pause withdrawals they know the company is done for and they have to set themselves up for bankruptcy. If it were depositor-first mindset, the damage could be spread out by limiting withdrawals but still giving some percentage of total deposit as liquidity. It seems pretty offensive that most of these companies just flip the switch to absorbing customer funds for general operations runway, lawyers and payouts for secured creditors/owners.
Which in banking is known as bail-in (regulations introduced after 2008).
In the financial service industry you can't really do a chapter 11, i.e. operate while being protected from your creditors, as your business is precisely to take money from creditors (unlike a car manufacturer). That left you as only solution of either doing a bail out (3rd party, typically state, injecting capital) or going bust Lehman's way.
Bail-in was introduced where the regulator has the power to declare a bank non viable, and to impose an extra-judicial restructuring over a weekend so the bank can operate normally on Monday morning. The losses in the restructuring follow a modified creditor hierarchy, which essentially follows the creditor hierarchy with some tweaks (tries to avoid restructuring deposits, complex liabilities or anything secured, and favors restructuring subordinated instruments and wholesale funding liabilities).
Crypto is reinventing all the financial scandals and fuckups of the last century and re-discovering the benefit of the financial regulations it was designed to avoid.
The whole point of cryptocurrency is to get beyond such limitations as "FDIC insurance" and "accredited investor" and "anti money laundering", and allow people to give their money directly to Singaporean scammers without legal recourse.
yield farm has a definition in DeFi that includes a software where "disabling withdrawals and undergoing restructuring" is not capable of happening. (withdrawal control could be in the codebase, its purpose would be entirely different)
I wouldn't call this a yield farm, except in a hyperbolic and pejorative concatenation of words "since it has a lot of yield products"
at least in the DeFi version, any impropriety would be known instantly and its effect would be known instantly, users with insurance would be able to make a claim pretty quickly and get paid out, users without insurance would know their loss and be along for the ride or move on
I think a lot of the people discussing all the crypto news (even here where people normally tend to have high technical literacy) have never bothered to try yield farming or using defi, to understand the distinction.
Which is a shame, because whatever your feelings on crypto are, I'd rather see well-formed criticisms from crypto-literate people than critical or supportive comments from people who actually don't know anything they're talking about. $5-20 is enough to get an understanding of what defi is (fees on Polygon and Fantom are fractions of pennies), but it does perhaps require an investment of 5-20 hours as well.
i think a lot of people who are too heavily invested in crypto tend to take all the crypto marketing way too seriously. hardly any defi plaftorm or cryptocurrency is actually decentralised in a real sense apart from maybe the top 3.
as an example, terra luna was a "decentralized" platform (ignore the anchor ponzi for a moment). Even its critics generally focused on anchor and did not question the decentralization part.
And yet such a decentralized platform very quickly disabled withdrawals (UST peg) as soon as it became clear that their ponzi had collapsed. now we can go in depth as to whether the mechanism they used was legitimate or whether the validators were factually independent of mr kwon but it really does not matter
that is why people dont and shouldnt take any such claims very seriously. its primary purpose is marketing only.
never claimed otherwise. its just that this scalar value is very very low, might as well be zero for most defi
>Terra paused IBC bridging capabilities. This action has specific validators needed to execute it.
thats fine. i am not convinced that these validators acted independently of mr kwon. functonally the whole terra ecosystem may well be a dictatorship under kwon
> absorbing customer funds for general operations runway, lawyers and payouts for secured creditors/owners.
If they're actually insolvent, they're obliged to do this. They have no more customers, and should discontinue all operations; they only have creditors of one form or another.
A "yield farm" seems to be just an unregulated shadow bank: "borrow short lend long", but lending into really risky assets like other cryptocurrency firms. It's not exactly Basel III.
I don't know a thing about Vauld, so no accusations here, but surely people realize that anything offering +18% on what you can get from a bank will often be a ponzi scheme?
Many of the individual entities are honest as far as it goes (but often the one paying you 18% is just taking your funds and "investing" them in the one paying 19%, hence the current contagion). The crypto ecosystem as a whole is the ponzi scheme, and it's only going to collapse when people lose faith in all of it, bitcoin proper included.
The system will keep working on the way down (at least until the mining world gets small enough that someone can do a 51% attack), but once the expectation of future growth disappears, the price will crater and never come back and the whole thing will be fairly harmless. I guess the network will still work for people buying drugs, but do people even still do that?
Its a data store where you pay once for people to store thousands of copies of anything in perpetuity. Retrieval is free. The people storing copies don't listen to each other, and so have incentives not to delete content.
Network will be there. Cheaper the better. Just an option that has some value, not a killer app, doesn’t need to be. Funny system since you can put any junk there.
> Its a data store where you pay once for people to store thousands of copies of anything in perpetuity. Retrieval is free. The people storing copies don't listen to each other, and so have incentives not to delete content.
Only as long as they can make enough money off it. At some point miners will start compacting the history they keep or just straight up turn off their systems.
yeah, the same as any other cloud storage. I'm content with the much greater redundancy for some copies to persist and be recovered, not a guarantee, more guarantees than every other option.
the unique issue is how a 51% attack could rewrite history, but that's also mitigated by how often people branch bitcoin from various states in history to their own new chains that have their own miners, inheriting and persevering all the stored stuff.
Often? What conceivable (legal) system could consistently generate such returns and not manage to capture all capital on earth eventually? The best financial vehicle ever conceived has about 9% per year over the last 50 years or so.
We live in a world of wildcat brokerages and self-styled Warren Buffets on Tiktok. People who are in it largely all think they can time their exit before the Ponzi collapses.
There are ways to get that sort of return legally, but you need a lot of collateral and a strong stomach for risk. Basically leverage hard and invest in something risky - you multiply the return (which should be good already) but also multiply the risk.
If you know what you are doing and have luck you can make very high returns.
Mostly people don't know what they are doing though and get into big trouble.
even after so many examples it baffles me how people keep falling for this. people just refuse to think about the cashflows.
no its not a high risk investment. no actual business goes to these crypto firms asking them for a such a ridiculous loan. so where does the money come from then? a steady stream of investment from idiots of course. they pay the early investors using the later depositors money. eventually you run out of fools and then this happens
A lot of crypto products use interest rate style benefits because that’s what people recognize and understand
Behind the scenes many of them are making money from volume capture and tiny but lucrative transaction fees, no different than Robinhood or Citadel, the perpetual nature just isn’t guaranteed and longer dated payment promises are perilous.
Lets say an organization is really making 100% ROI but doesnt want shareholders, they offer a competitive 18% return in a bond and thats that. Many more people believe the same you do if you told them a higher and truer number. “35%? Obvious scam”.
There are many market inefficiencies that scale up to hundreds of millions and billions of dollars
People don't understand “senior convertible debt” they understand “18%”
Many yield bearing products in the crypto space offered floating interest rates that adjust to market realities, these fixed interest rates ones are the ones unable to adjust.
Correct. My mattress does not surveil my financial activity to the Government, or operate as an extension of law enforcement. Nor does it act as a form of power projection by being something to which access to it is centrally controlled for the sake of sanctions.
Broadly any organisation which most of its business is taking deposits on a short term basis and lending them out on longer, fixed terms can be deemed a "bank" and analysed as such, including the vulnerability to bank runs which has taken out this and other crypto firms. It's not a regulated bank, and it may be illegal for it to call itself a bank, hence it's a wildcat or shadow bank. But the business is definitely bank-shaped.
But a real bank is FDIC insured, so the "value" of deposits never goes to 0, unlike "wildcat banks". Unless the central bank can't print more money, and that will never happen by definition.
> Broadly any organisation which most of its business is taking deposits on a short term basis and lending them out on longer, fixed terms can be deemed a "bank" and analysed as such
uh. no, it really can't. you can't even do this with a credit union.
if you think the major purpose of a bank is to store deposits, you don't understand what banks are.
.
> But the business is definitely bank-shaped.
holding deposits is not "being bank shaped"
many, many things in our society hold desposits, from insurance companies to blue chips, to stocks and investments, from annuities to rollovers, from awards to grants, from credit accounts to coupons, and even the local layaway
none of them are even slightly banks
the purpose of a bank is to give certainty by being bound to specific laws
i know, when i put my money in a bank, that it won't be invested by the bank in specific dangerous ways. i do not know that with a credit union. i definitely do not know that with some coin dot com that you imagine to be bank shaped.
this post is about coin holders learning one of the many differences
many banks - more than half - don't take deposits at all
this is a deep failure to grasp what a bank is, and why this isn't a bank
the crypto community is about to start learning about bank bindings around leverage that emerged in the 1920s
afterwards they're going to learn about floor limits that were set on actual banks in the 1930s, and why
after that, they're going to learn about the fdic, and that it doesn't apply to things that fans believe are "bank shaped"
For a long time, I was just annoyed. But it has become clear that these digital currencies are one of the most revolting and pathetic things our species has ever created. Great job!
One of my all time favorite (in a creative thought provoking way) comments from this forum suggested that cryptocurrency may be an answer to the Fermi Paradaox - specifically the Dark Forest theory of it. Instead of going to the trouble of actually physcially trying to destroy us, an alien civilization could simply craft an economic weapon and broadcast it to us as an anonymous whitepaper and we simply destroy ourselves. Far-fetched but darkly comic.
More believable as a machine superintelligence rather than aliens, since we "know" the former will be here in 10 or 20 or 100 years, and immediately formulate ways to get humans out of the picture.
If it were a depositer first mindset, the business couldn't exist, because the whole operation is a ponzi.
If they held depositor funds safely, they couldn't pay interest.
And they did pay interest for a while, that was the liquidity.
That's what the deal is, same as any unsecured loan: high risk of losing your deposit, in exchange for steady interest payments for indeterminate amount of time.
It's like a casino game that pays 1.1 on a win and 0 on a loss, and you play once a month or whatever your staking period is.
How do these people run centralized platforms and talk about decentralized money?
Pretty bad for crypto in India though. They had a lot of users and were lauded as a “safe” platform. Only makes the government’s argument to regulate crypto heavily, or even make it illegal, stronger
Suspending withdrawals should not be legal. It’s not their money, it belongs to their customers.
Law should require that depositors always be the most senior creditor. And suspension of withdrawals is the deposit taker defaulting on its obligations, which allows depositors to force the company into liquidation. The proceeds of which are shared between creditors on an amount-owed basis.
I used to think all these guys were brilliant predators. I've updated my thinking in that I allow for the possibility that some are dumb predators but I can't tell the difference.
It's a ponzi. The goal is to grow as fast as possible before a liquidity crunch makes you go insolvent. But the main goal was always to get that payday after bankruptcy steals the user funds.
Their Terms and Conditions regularly state that users of the platform don't deposit their money, but actually lend that money to the platform, and that the platform isn't obligated to pay back that loan in case of default.
Basically, for a marginal yield in a volatile industry, you are increasing your exposure to counter-party risk. People using these services are greedy and dumb, and I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would do this.
Also; I expect that a significant number of these companies will eventually be sued and will be forced to repay their customers.
Also, they may not have lost any real money, so the users may not have the rights they think they do here (and probably shouldn’t, given the courts aren’t funded to pursue imaginary internet money).
While this is an edge case with a service that is far from being mainstream, I wonder if that kind of setup will propagate to standard financial products.
I am thinking about how over the years we stopped owning digital purchases like music and books, and instead moved to a model where the service gives unlimited access to the good in exchange for a one time payment. At first it was a few fringe services, and now this is basically the norm when it comes to digital purchases.
How far would we be from a future where a brick and mortar "banks" offer their standard services, but also a "fancy account" that feels more attractive but doesn't actually work like a bank account anymore.
> wonder if that kind of setup will propagate to standard financial products
It won’t. It’s been outlawed since the 30s. China had its wealth management product era, and is now cracking down. Nobody financially literate should be falling for a yield farming scheme.
Accepting loans from private consumers is a highly regulated thing where you can't (and/or shouldn't, depending on the jurisdiction) choose what rules will apply simply by declaring so in your terms and conditions.
If a platform wants people to lend money to them, they should be a licensed (and FDIC-insured) credit institution.
IMHO if you're holding/handling securities owned by customers, then there are even stronger requirements for keeping them separate from your own funds, in that case you would have customer-owned securities (or baseball cards, or whatever) in your custody, not owned/borrowed by you.
If you want that kind of security, normal banks are a better place for your money. Traditional finance may have its drawbacks but at least customers losing their deposits because the bank went bankrupt is extremely rare these days.
Isn‘t it technically the same? Your deposits would be used to pay back the banks debt before it would be given back to you? Yes, it‘s rare but the process seems to be the same?
Your deposits are bank debt. What happens in these situations is that liabilities (debts, including deposits, unpaid wages, rent etc) exceed assets (cash, investments), usually because some of the investments turn out to be worthless. So you get whatever fraction of the deposit that can be covered by the sale of the remaining assets.
This is why Western governments have bank insurance schemes to make the depositors whole in these cases.
Over here banks decided that they own your money, and that if you withdraw large enough sums they're allowed to charge you for it. Banks are just as bad, if not more so because of how ingrained into the political system that are.
The Netherlands, and the ABN in particular. They've decided that if you take out more than 12K per year, each subsequent withdrawal will cost a fixed amount plus a percentage of the amount withdrawn.
There was a huge string of bank failures in the 2008 era. However, in those cases, the system worked; failing banks were immediately nationalised and recapitalized in order to keep allowing people to withdraw money. There were a few exceptions, such as Cyprus and Iceland, where banks either had to "haircut" deposits or were for a time unable to allow withdrawals.
It is wrong to ask for citations when the answer is so darn easy to get. The first result of the text of your question “[US] bank failures in 2008” yields the answer on any major search engine. Citations should only be asked when due diligence takes longer than 2 seconds.
Do you know why Wachovia is not included in the Wikipedia list of the 2008 financial crisis list of bank failures? I remember when that failed and I was watching tv.
Wachovia failed but because of its size and scope the FDIC couldn't do a simple weekend takeover. Instead, they forced it to sell to Wells Fargo for virtually nothing before it actually went under. It was a different sort of bank failure given its interconnectedness with investment banking.
Similar to the way Merrill Lynch was forced into a shotgun marriage with Bank of America to avoid a collapse, and a number of similar firms during the collapse of Wall Street.
Ah okay right. I just read up on Wachovia and it seems like that’s what the Govt tried doing with Citi. Then WF came in and paid much more. I’m not saying this to say you’re wrong, just what I read as someone who doesn’t know this stuff. And overall your point is correct the Govt was trying to do that and then it seems they then didn’t let Citi fight for Wachovia properly because they were happy WF was buying them.
Yeah the Merrill Lynch one I am more familiar with and how much it has cost BoA
TOS:
" Due to the market being in a nascent stage, during a market disruption or during a force majeure event, you may face difficulties or impossibility in liquidating your position under certain market conditions. "
"23.3. Please note that in particular, any of your losses caused by any of the following events, including but not limited to: "
" loss of profits, sales, business, business opportunity or revenue; " (they made this section a lighter hard to read gray than the rest of their TOS)
"In the event that Celsius becomes bankrupt, enters liquidation or is otherwise unable to repay its obligations, any Eligible Digital Assets used in the Earn Service or as collateral under the Borrow Service may not be recoverable, and you may not have any legal remedies or rights in connection with Celsius’ obligations to you other than your rights as a creditor of Celsius under any applicable laws."
"Loss of business opportunity" feels particularly broad in a clause giving them scope not to repay your money... almost like they wanted to leave scope to rugpull even if the service was operating at a small profit.
A LOT of regulation goes along with that. These entities eschewed regulation and those investing talked about the benefits of eschewing it.
The people whose withdrawals are suspended are NOT depositors. They’re unsecured creditors, the terms of such services generally say they transfer the right in the tokens to the exchange or lending co.
These companies aren’t banks. They should not have been allowed to grow as they did; they were obvious ponzis. Had they had the regulations you advocate they could never have formed in the first place, or they never would have got capital.
It's a scam, not the government's fault. There would be no way to enforce such a law. It's on you to understand that get-rich-quick schemes are too good to be true.
That's kind of what's going on here already. If the company is able to resume withdrawals then everyone is going to withdraw and it's over. If the company is not able to do so then it's ultimately going to be liquidated, and then it's over. What isn't clear is how and when the depositors want that to happen. There are going to be positions where you could liquidate now at a loss, or you could wait it out and that position is whole or at a profit. Who gets to decide?
It's less bad overall if the company suspends withdrawals and tries to sort it out in an orderly manner than if it just hastily liquidated everything to survive the run until the moment of running out of assets to deliver.
This is a matter for Singaporean bankruptcy law. This company seems to not have been registered as a bank or whatever the equivalent in local finreg terms is, so you'll just have to file with the Singaporean court and hope.
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When will people realize that "depositing" money somewhere is lending it to the people taking your "deposit".
Regulated deposit taking institutions have rules on what they're allowed to do with that loaned money.
Governments may insure those that loaned money, because a bank is inherently unstable, it borrows short, but lends long.
So any "bank run" where all depositors (creditors) want their funds back will break the bank, because it will be unable to do the same thing for the loans that it has.
>So any "bank run" where all depositors (creditors) want their funds back will break the bank, because it will be unable to do the same thing for the loans that it has.
Governments and banks can fall, or change their monetary policies, at any time - and your currency today can literally have no value tomorrow (recent examples include Indian demonetization, Argentina, Venezuela, Zimbabwe) How do you know it won't happen to your country?
I have some sympathy for the victims of those political and economic collapses, and for people in similarly unstable or unfree countries who may suffer hardship through failures of their political system.
However, if you're sitting comfortably in a Western country that runs free and fair elections? This is your "only you can prevent forest fires" moment. It's part of your freedom that you have the responsibility to participate in keeping the fraudulent and incompetent out of your democracy. This includes not letting yourself get seduced by populists or youtubers with weird economic theories. And also not pretending that collapse is imminent simply because oil prices have gone up.
(It's also not clear that actual loss was a big problem of Indian demonetization, just the inconvenience of the exchange process)
> sitting comfortably in a Western country that runs free and fair elections
4% of the world population, and most of this site's users, live in the USA, where free and fair elections, along with human rights, are being turned down this year.
> I’m assuming the reference was to Roe v. Wade, but would like to hear more.
Republicans ran in elections on "stack the supreme court with people who will enact our values".
Republicans ran in elections on "our values are ban abortions".
Republicans win election.
Republicans winning an election, stacking the court with their people, having them do exactly what they promised to do and enacting their campaign promises is democracy in action, not the suspension of democracy.
If you dont want it, everyone needs to vote for what they do want.
Hate to break it to you but Trump lost the popular vote and there are several states and many counties that will always go republican despite them losing the popular vote.
Is your electoral system fair if it is this gerrymandered?
Furthermore, most states and districts are “safe” for one of the two main parties. Of the remaining places, a voter can choose between either of only two parties. If neither represent them, then they have no one to vote for. This situation is not “free” in the true sense of the word. You do not have a free vote, and in most places your vote is meaningless.
Worse still is the fact that one of your political parties openly attempted to overthrow the result of the election in order to stay in power, and the other party has not brought the full force of the law to bare for fear of speaking civil unrest.
It is not hyperbolic to warn Americans of the extreme danger their democracy is in, nor of its inherent weakness due to the rather antiquated voting system it uses.
Stacking a court goes against the separation of power that the three estates were supposed to uphold. No party that openly tries to pack a court against the will of the people should get a single vote from anyone who cares about freedom.
America is sailing very close to the wind and Americans should not be complacent about the risks they face
Not related to GP, but just something that's common on thread like this in general. There seems to be an attitude that the modern world has ushered some eternal era and that since everything is better in the modern world nothing can ever get worse again and the empire will never decline. Not surprised, given the sites association with VCs and startups that operate on the delusion of infinite growth.
Yes. Similar to what people like Bill Gates and Jordan Peterson keep repeating while wanting to generally maintain core status quo traits. Stephen Pinker championing this and being buddies with the first two is also of note.
Tho their optimism point is to be happy with what you have and calm down and so on. As if the way we have our current rights was gotten by calming down.
> Tho their optimism point is to be happy with what you have and calm down and so on.
Sure, that's fair, I'll even agree that the tone of many of these pieces is hyperbolic. But I'm not going to stick my head in the sand and pretend that things can't go bad, because that's a sure fire way to ensure they eventually do go bad.
Well I’m disagreeing with that statement haha. So I think it’s only fair cuz it sounds fair and calm. But it’s said by people who want to preserve their own high status in society and don’t care about serious progress being made any more.
As if America doesn’t have so many people paycheck to paycheck, in poverty, etc. and that’s just America
> Hate to break it to you but Trump lost the popular vote
You are aware that the competition is for the most electoral college seats. I am fairly certain that the Democrats were aware of this for the election as well. Yet armed with this knowledege they still lost to the worst run campaign in a century fronted by an actual clown.
> Is your electoral system fair if it is this gerrymandered?
I mean, the people elected to office litterally promised to gerrymander. If the people elect someone who brings in proportional representation will you have a problem with that?
> Furthermore, most states and districts are “safe” for one of the two main parties.
Hang on, those "safe" districts are "safe" because an overwhelming majority of people vote for the party that wins... That is democracy! Are you arguing for or against democracy?
> No party that openly tries to pack a court against the will of the people should get a single vote from anyone who cares about freedom
Litteral campaign promise, and people voted for it in numbers, it is the will of the people.
> It is not hyperbolic to warn Americans of the extreme danger their democracy is in
The problem is democracy itself. People are voting for shitty hacky demi-gods selling them a used car that runs on snake oil.
Every side of every agenda has become infected with this horrible disease, but what is happening is the logical conclusion of what happens when you combine democracy with an erosion of education. It didnt start this year or with trump etc. It has been happening for decades.
The population is now so poorly equiped to navigate the most basic of tasks that a foreign power can swing an election by spending $100,000 on some facebook ads.
You missed the point of this entire thread. The whole point is fairness and freedom. Not about the basic obvious truth that Trump won the electoral college. That’s a pointless factoid that everyone is already agreeing with. The rest of the comment appears to be along similar lines of logic.
> free and fair elections, are being turned down this year
What changed this year? The most commone argument for the election not being free and fair here is "electoral college vs popular vote". Some have even backed up the very point by showing that this situation has been persistent for the last 20 years, so ... what changed this year? Did they add electoral college votes to red states or something?
Free and fair elections - personally I think of elections not being free and fair someone standing next to you as you vote saying vote for vlad or we will kill your whole familiy or votes being thrown in the bin. As far as I am aware none of that is happening.
Its pretty bad faith to say Republicans claiming electoral fraud is the Big Lie but when Dems say its Not a Free and Fair Election that it is an irrefutable evidence and vice versa. Simultaneously holding the belief that the elctions are Not Free and Fair while claiming that they are indeed Free and Fair depending upon which party is claiming it is rank hypocracy at best.
Why does it matter if something changed? If they weren’t free and fair in previous years, that can still make them not free and fair this year.
> …not being free and fair…vote for vlad…or we will kill your whole familiy or votes being thrown in the bin…
You gave an extremely specific coercive tactic and basic corruption. How does it follow if neither happening, then, what, things are fine?
This is reminiscent of the neoliberal moderate to conservative status-quo-seeking intellectual and incredibly lazy common talking point. A point echoed by Bill Maher to Jordan Peterson to Bill Gates. “Things aren’t so bad. So be okay with that.” The classic Stephen Pinker elitist “optimism”. So a point made since forever.
> Its pretty bad faith…when Dems say its Not a Free and Fair Election that it is an irrefutable evidence…
If Dems say they are ‘Free and Fair’ with anything, they are liars, as usual. I am going much farther than you in my denigration of the Dems. What’s the point of this paragraph being written to me?
I think what's worth thinking about is whether you DO actually have enough democracy. Are first-past-the-post voting systems able to accurately represent the diverse views of a nation like America? I'd argue that they do not and that the problems you have outlined could be solved with MORE democracy rather than less.
If one goes back and listens to Trump speeches from the 2016 race he actually sounded a lot like a bonkers version of Bernie Sanders in terms of the way he tried to appeal to the economic distress of many potential voters. If there was a more representative voting system – such as that in Germany – you might end up with policies that Americans actually want by having multiple parties that can represent all Americans.
A politician is only as good as your ability to fire them. You can't fire yours very easily.
And if you think democracy is the problem, why not take a look at the difference between two oil-rich nations, Norway and Libya, or two neighbours, North and South Korea.
The republicans who have barely won the presidential popular vote in decades? How is that a free and fair election? Similarly, the senate that confirms the Supreme Court justices — how is it free and fair that Wyoming with 500K people gets two senators, same as every other state? Except DC gets no Congress people in the house or senate. Nor does Puerto Rico get proper representation.
Because that’s how the Constitution was written, so that the minority has a voice and Wyoming citizens matter just as much as coastal elites.
Very fair
Being in a document from 250 years ago doesn’t mean anything except it’s in a document that old. Certainly doesn’t make whatever it says about elections free and fair. That defies logic.
Explain how the popular vote not mattering for president is free and fair?
Why are you choosing only one minority to care about? State citizens of Wyoming? Why not any other minority? Why not minority religions, colors of skin, political views, gender identity, sexuality, disabilities, mental health conditions? What makes not caring about these minorities fair?
Why is Wyoming even a state? Have you read up on the politics of how we got to 50 states? Especially the civil war and post civil war time period? How is that fair?
How is DC not having a voice fair? How is Puerto Rico, Guam, and the other territories not having any sort of proper voice fair?
Not sure why fairness is the ultimate arbiter. There are obvious reasons why you don’t want sparsely-populated stretches of contiguous territory to feel disenfranchised on account of their smaller population. Fair systems that predictably spin apart are useless.
That’s what the discussion was about. Otherwise why is any talking here happening?
> There are obvious reasons why you don’t want sparsely-populated stretches of contiguous territory to feel disenfranchised on account of their smaller population.
You and others can’t keep saying this stuff as if it’s true by default just because we are brainwashed into this as kids in school and in every day life. Again I ask. Why is that a worry for minority populations but not any of the variety of other minority populations I listed before?
If you do feel that populations like lgbtq, different minority skin colors, different mental health conditions, disabilities, also shouldn’t feel dosenfranchised, then how come that’s exactly what’s happening with some of these populations with the current system of giving a ton of power to rural low population conservatives? Like lgbtq, some minorites, etc. It’s contradictory logic.
I wonder what exactly would happen if the feelings of these rural people are felt to be disenfranchised. What are the obvious reasons you assert? Why are those reasons better than myself and many others feeling disenfranchised with the current senate and electoral college system who aren’t in rural places?
To clarify the matter of the recent (post-Reagan/George H. W. Bush) US popular vote for President, the Democratic candidate has won the popular vote in each Presidential election starting in 1992 except for 2004 (George W. Bush re-election vs. John Kerry). During that period, Republicans won the Electoral vote and thus the presidency in 2000 (George W. Bush initial election vs. Al Gore) and 2016 (Donald Trump election vs. Hillary Clinton).
Put another way:
The Democratic candidate won the popular vote and Electoral College in:
1992
1996
2008
2012
2020
The Democratic candidate won the popular vote and the Republican candidate won the Electoral College in:
2000
2016
The Republican candidate won the popular vote and the Electoral College in:
Excellent comment, I’ll be saving this if you don’t mind… really lays out just how a large fraction of the country has some very legitimate grievances about the fairness of our elections.
In their study of voter confidence in national elections 2000 through 2012, Michael Sances and Charles Stewart found that while most supporters of both the winner and loser of an election are very confident in that their own vote was counted correctly, the confidence of those on the losing side slightly decreases. Moreover, the confidence of those on the winning side increases significantly from its pre-election level.
> Many Democrats think that the 2016 election result was rigged.
Touché, the "Russians forced deplorables to vote for Trump" is another mass delusion.
Pretty much the only good thing you can say about Hillary is that she didn't lead a mass of cannon fodder democrats, and a select group of conspirators to assassinate her own VP.
since we’re on hn i’ll assume your comment was in good faith and not a bad faith attempt to paint entire segments of our citizens and their legitimate concerns as if they are somehow unreasonable.
your comment assumes a perfectly functioning system and ignores the many non-hyperbolic, very real and very rational concerns which our citizens of all stripes have explained repeatedly.
> to paint entire segments of our citizens and their legitimate concerns as if they are somehow unreasonable.
the dems want to murder babies
Now is that hyperbolic, legitimate, rational reasonable? It is a concerns which our citizens of all stripes have explained repeatedly.
> your comment assumes a perfectly functioning system
Actually the system is functioning shockingly well in the face of a rabid population hooked on fox/cnn talking heads then voting in bad actors promising to be bad actors.
For some absolutely baffling reason the will of the people at this point in time is to elect batshit crazy representitives of all stripes. The best spent dollar of the billion or so spent on a presidential election cycle would be to try and figure out why that is and what you can do to get people to vote in their self interest and not against.
> Now is that hyperbolic, legitimate, rational reasonable?
obviously that is hyperbolic, irrational, and unreasonable.
assuming that you’re referring to abortion—those are not babies and it is absurdly hyperbolic to imply that an entire segment (81,268,924 people voted Dem in 2020) that more than 81 Million people want to murder babies. Obviously you can see how ridiculously hyperbolic and irrational your statement is.
as for the rest of your comment, it would appear like you agree that we have anything but a perfectly functioning system, even if you chose to ignore the larger obvious systemic problems which have been repeatedly and reasonably addressed by countless rational citizens.
so, with that said, even tho it’s clear that you are not engaging at all in good faith, and it would seem you are indeed attempting to paint entire massive segments of our citizens and their absolutely legitimate concerns as if they are all somehow unreasonable—your gp post still assumes a perfectly functioning system, and i believe a very convincing and strong argument can (and has repeatedly) been made that this is not currently the case.
What? Murder babies? Why are you asking if that’s hyperbolic to say? There’s no significant portion of any population in any part of the world where that isn’t hyperbolic.
I concur with the sibling comment. It’s hard to respond to this or my last comment because of how it appears your comments are made in bad faith.
I doubt they're thinking about Dobbs (the decision overturning Roe). As a result of the Big Lie, Republican legislators in various places have decided they need to be able to "ensure electoral integrity" by giving themselves the power to replace local election officials or even over-rule the election outcome itself.
> Republican legislators in various places have decided they need to be able to "ensure electoral integrity" by giving themselves the power to replace local election officials or even over-rule the election outcome itself
There is a real problem. It is far from foregone.
Treating hypotheticals as actuals, particularly with risks, shortens one's time horizons and raises one's risk tolerance. It's why people who believe these tales of woe and peril, which occur pretty much every generation in every society, tend to gamble on things like crypto versus investing for the long term.
The overview & illustrative scenario of the R plan to implement minority rule. [0]
The SCOTUS conservative group has already indicated that this is next.
This is very far under the radar and not even close to hyperbole. Kind of like COVIT-19 in Dec-2019/Jan-2020 - the only people saying this was serious were treated like hyperbolic cranks. Same in Hungary before Orban took over - democracy is already dead there.
I don't think that's entirely hyperbole, given the stacking of the Supreme Court to achieve particular policy outcomes. It seems likely that Moore v. Harper will allow states to gerrymander Federal elections, severely reducing the extent to which they are "free and fair".
Indian demonetization has irreparably harmed the economy for decades at the very least.
It absolutely halted growth and immediately led to a much lower growth level from which India has not recovered, and possibly never will, at least under the current government.
And with high inflation (even pre pandemic) and a huge young population, the destruction of growth was an absolute disaster for India which absolutely needs to cash in on its youth right now before they all grow old and need to be financially supported themselves.
The demonetization was extraordinarily bad at doing that. Turns out when you demonetize currency, the rich and corrupt can find ways around it, while it's the poor who lose their meager savings.
How did the poor lose their savings? I'm not from India, I just happened to travel there while that was happening.
My understanding was that everyone could wait in line to exchange their 500/1000 rupee notes for 100 or 2000 notes. The lines were long and the banks were frequently out of money to exchange from, but I thought they could also deposit it to their bank if they had one (letting the bank deal with the demonetized notes).
I know there are also a lot of unbanked in India, but presumably the period for exchanging demonetized notes was long enough to allow them to exchange any cash savings they had.. was this not the case?
Notes could only be exchanged for 18 days with fairly low daily limits per person. And that was only if you could find a bank that had new bills after waiting in line.
The ill-conceived demonetization certainly led to a disruption to economic growth in India that outstripped global declines in growth.
I'm not sure it was actually a net-negative for the long term growth of the Indian economy, as the resulting lack of trust in physical cash accelerated the digitalization of Indian money and faster adoption of e-payments with Rupay and UPI, which should improve economic growth.
> you have the responsibility to participate in keeping the fraudulent and incompetent out of your democracy.
As a person who lived through the Zimbabwe crash, this right here was the problem. People voted to throw out the tyrant and he "found the votes he needed." This economy is reeling from all the money that the previous administration printed (which was precisely what started the snowball in Zimbabwe).
What is lost to the crypto crowd is that sometimes "what is good for me" is not always "what is good for us." Voting yourself more money is very good way to contribute to a collapse (as Charles Munger points out[1]). This seems lost to the generally active votebase, too.
The end of the story is that crypto people who stole these billions will do well, and the millions of people who lost their savings because of cryptos (including myself) will have to work twice to make it again.
Enslaved to work because of scams, such a dream world.
An explicit part of freedom is the freedom to make mistakes and suffer horribly for it. This isn't pretty and it is fair to hold it up as an inevitable part of the crypto world - but this can happen and crypto can still live up to its promise. Losing everything is an aspect of unregulated banking.
The argument that the crypto people can make (and I am still one) is that over a lifetime I feel I am certain to lose ~40% of my cash to government inflation (possibly more), people who are incompetent will get automatic handouts every so often to stay in charge & vast sums will go to fighting wars in places I don't want to fight wars.
I'd rather take a system where there is a 10% chance to lose everything and people can only create money according to pre-agreed rules. No stealth taxes, I want to know who is paying and how much. If that involves concentrating the risk it is worth it. Depending on how much you lost you might still come out ahead in such a world.
You’re crazy. Printing money funds socially useful things in government. Losing money to scammers is pure destruction. The idea that we should put up with massive amounts of fraud in order to destroy social safety nets is quite laughable.
You seem to be taking the position that printing money is the worst form of funding government and we should only do it if there are no other ways to do so. Printing money functions as a distorted but less bureaucratic and less invasive wealth tax. I don’t think it’s especially great but I think it functions reasonably as a piece of the puzzle. Without printing money we need to raise government revenues by close to 50% which is a rather drastic increase in taxation.
> You seem to be taking the position that printing money is the worst form of funding government and we should only do it if there are no other ways to do so.
I'd be perfectly eager to take that side of the debate if you want to argue about it, but that isn't really what the topic was in this thread. I was observing that subjecting yourself to a voluntary wealth tax could reasonably be a worse option than taking a risk of losing everything in one ugly crash.
That isn't a crazy position. It does require a tolerance of risk.
> Without printing money we need to raise government revenues by close to 50% which is a rather drastic increase in taxation.
People are already paying that tax though - the wealth that the government is moving around had to come from somewhere. We know the government isn't creating it otherwise there'd be no need for the money printing to happen. We just aren't sure who specifically is paying how much.
So it would be a drastic increase in observed tax, but probably not a big change to most people's lifestyles.
You know, as someone who works in technology, I'm becoming more of a luddite as time passes and I'm starting to think the weirdo libertarian goldbugs might be onto something. But there is no silver (or gold) bullet - better to diversify your savings.
despite causing a lot of needless anguish, nobody really lost money in demonetization. something like 99.99% of money was just exchanged for new notes. thats one of the reasons why its considered such a failure
It's sad that they announced no withdrawals and the Twitter feed is full of people asking if they can transfer to their hardware wallet. What do they think no withdrawals mean?
Serious question. Who would still leave money in one of these platforms after seeing so many competing platforms restrict withdrawals? Are these just the true believers left? Maybe people not paying attention to the trends?
Been spending lots of time on the subreddit related to the platforms. Lots of people wait to hear any bad news before doing any move. Celcius is down? Good thing I'm just on Voyager, it's all good! Lots of people see those events as isolated even if there is clearly contagion since Luna went down.
Lots of the people that had money on Voyager thought it was legit because it's listed on the Canadian stock market, thought there was some kind of FIDC insurance, etc. So because they didn't see much warning sign that specifically Voyager was in danger (even if there was!), they don't think anything applies to them. They might not read crypto news every single day or every week.
There's also inertia when it comes to finance. People might have stopped buying/selling coins through this crazy market, but they decided to park their money somewhere (on an exchange) without thinking that those go down too. They have been used for many years of coins going up and down, but not the actual exchanges going down. Most of those people were not in crypto when Mt Gox went down.
Of course you can see tons of people as well that have been trying to get their money out of Voyager/Celcius for a few weeks before the crash, but there was restrictions on how much you could remove every day, so they got caught while there was still money left.
198 comments
[ 508 ms ] story [ 4176 ms ] threadOf course you can make money by risking everything... But it risks everything.
It is not as big as binance (indian version), wazirx, coindcx, zebpay but can be considered around position 7-8 in the list of indian crypto exchanges. Users mainly used it for interest earning by lending their crypto to vauld.
"Yes, I'm sure your RandomCoin with unrealistic yields is just having a momentarly hiccup, no need to worry" /s
But ye ... there should be a controlled collapse of these things. Immediate liquidification with depositors having priority.
In the financial service industry you can't really do a chapter 11, i.e. operate while being protected from your creditors, as your business is precisely to take money from creditors (unlike a car manufacturer). That left you as only solution of either doing a bail out (3rd party, typically state, injecting capital) or going bust Lehman's way.
Bail-in was introduced where the regulator has the power to declare a bank non viable, and to impose an extra-judicial restructuring over a weekend so the bank can operate normally on Monday morning. The losses in the restructuring follow a modified creditor hierarchy, which essentially follows the creditor hierarchy with some tweaks (tries to avoid restructuring deposits, complex liabilities or anything secured, and favors restructuring subordinated instruments and wholesale funding liabilities).
Crypto is reinventing all the financial scandals and fuckups of the last century and re-discovering the benefit of the financial regulations it was designed to avoid.
Controlled by whom?
The whole point of cryptocurrency is to get beyond such limitations as "FDIC insurance" and "accredited investor" and "anti money laundering", and allow people to give their money directly to Singaporean scammers without legal recourse.
I wouldn't call this a yield farm, except in a hyperbolic and pejorative concatenation of words "since it has a lot of yield products"
at least in the DeFi version, any impropriety would be known instantly and its effect would be known instantly, users with insurance would be able to make a claim pretty quickly and get paid out, users without insurance would know their loss and be along for the ride or move on
Which is a shame, because whatever your feelings on crypto are, I'd rather see well-formed criticisms from crypto-literate people than critical or supportive comments from people who actually don't know anything they're talking about. $5-20 is enough to get an understanding of what defi is (fees on Polygon and Fantom are fractions of pennies), but it does perhaps require an investment of 5-20 hours as well.
Like how someone was immediately reimbursed by an insurance protocol following an exploit
Instead of a news article only about the exploit and losses
as an example, terra luna was a "decentralized" platform (ignore the anchor ponzi for a moment). Even its critics generally focused on anchor and did not question the decentralization part.
And yet such a decentralized platform very quickly disabled withdrawals (UST peg) as soon as it became clear that their ponzi had collapsed. now we can go in depth as to whether the mechanism they used was legitimate or whether the validators were factually independent of mr kwon but it really does not matter
that is why people dont and shouldnt take any such claims very seriously. its primary purpose is marketing only.
Terra paused IBC bridging capabilities. This action has specific validators needed to execute it.
It also did not stop you from trading UST away, on the terra Blockchain itself.
never claimed otherwise. its just that this scalar value is very very low, might as well be zero for most defi
>Terra paused IBC bridging capabilities. This action has specific validators needed to execute it.
thats fine. i am not convinced that these validators acted independently of mr kwon. functonally the whole terra ecosystem may well be a dictatorship under kwon
If they're actually insolvent, they're obliged to do this. They have no more customers, and should discontinue all operations; they only have creditors of one form or another.
A "yield farm" seems to be just an unregulated shadow bank: "borrow short lend long", but lending into really risky assets like other cryptocurrency firms. It's not exactly Basel III.
Network will be there. Cheaper the better. Just an option that has some value, not a killer app, doesn’t need to be. Funny system since you can put any junk there.
Only as long as they can make enough money off it. At some point miners will start compacting the history they keep or just straight up turn off their systems.
the unique issue is how a 51% attack could rewrite history, but that's also mitigated by how often people branch bitcoin from various states in history to their own new chains that have their own miners, inheriting and persevering all the stored stuff.
If you know what you are doing and have luck you can make very high returns.
Mostly people don't know what they are doing though and get into big trouble.
Well, obviously. You can gamble on red in the casino and get 100% return (with a 50%+ risk of losing everything).
The point is that these scammers presented the 18% APY gambles as virtually risk free "investments".
Is that something that you see them doing elsewhere?
except in this case it's not really a ponzi scheme, more of high risk investment (think junk bonds) gone bad.
no its not a high risk investment. no actual business goes to these crypto firms asking them for a such a ridiculous loan. so where does the money come from then? a steady stream of investment from idiots of course. they pay the early investors using the later depositors money. eventually you run out of fools and then this happens
Behind the scenes many of them are making money from volume capture and tiny but lucrative transaction fees, no different than Robinhood or Citadel, the perpetual nature just isn’t guaranteed and longer dated payment promises are perilous.
Lets say an organization is really making 100% ROI but doesnt want shareholders, they offer a competitive 18% return in a bond and thats that. Many more people believe the same you do if you told them a higher and truer number. “35%? Obvious scam”.
There are many market inefficiencies that scale up to hundreds of millions and billions of dollars
People don't understand “senior convertible debt” they understand “18%”
Many yield bearing products in the crypto space offered floating interest rates that adjust to market realities, these fixed interest rates ones are the ones unable to adjust.
Laws don't function on what you think is equivalent
Banks are a lot more than "I will hold your money"
Your mattress is also not a bank
uh. no, it really can't. you can't even do this with a credit union.
if you think the major purpose of a bank is to store deposits, you don't understand what banks are.
.
> But the business is definitely bank-shaped.
holding deposits is not "being bank shaped"
many, many things in our society hold desposits, from insurance companies to blue chips, to stocks and investments, from annuities to rollovers, from awards to grants, from credit accounts to coupons, and even the local layaway
none of them are even slightly banks
the purpose of a bank is to give certainty by being bound to specific laws
i know, when i put my money in a bank, that it won't be invested by the bank in specific dangerous ways. i do not know that with a credit union. i definitely do not know that with some coin dot com that you imagine to be bank shaped.
this post is about coin holders learning one of the many differences
many banks - more than half - don't take deposits at all
this is a deep failure to grasp what a bank is, and why this isn't a bank
the crypto community is about to start learning about bank bindings around leverage that emerged in the 1920s
afterwards they're going to learn about floor limits that were set on actual banks in the 1930s, and why
after that, they're going to learn about the fdic, and that it doesn't apply to things that fans believe are "bank shaped"
The Russians didn’t rig Bernie Sanders out of the nomination of one of the two major parties twice either.
> USD is bad!!11
Does not compute.
If they held depositor funds safely, they couldn't pay interest.
And they did pay interest for a while, that was the liquidity.
That's what the deal is, same as any unsecured loan: high risk of losing your deposit, in exchange for steady interest payments for indeterminate amount of time.
It's like a casino game that pays 1.1 on a win and 0 on a loss, and you play once a month or whatever your staking period is.
>We’re here to stay and will continue to play a part in accelerating the transition to decentralized money.
https://twitter.com/darshanbathija/status/153911663182967603...
Pretty bad for crypto in India though. They had a lot of users and were lauded as a “safe” platform. Only makes the government’s argument to regulate crypto heavily, or even make it illegal, stronger
Law should require that depositors always be the most senior creditor. And suspension of withdrawals is the deposit taker defaulting on its obligations, which allows depositors to force the company into liquidation. The proceeds of which are shared between creditors on an amount-owed basis.
https://twitter.com/mashinsky/status/1430874984692555781
> @CelsiusNetwork is pausing all withdrawals
It's the CIIIRCLE of LIFE!
Basically, for a marginal yield in a volatile industry, you are increasing your exposure to counter-party risk. People using these services are greedy and dumb, and I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would do this.
Also; I expect that a significant number of these companies will eventually be sued and will be forced to repay their customers.
The money was already moved. They will declare bankruptcy.
Also, they may not have lost any real money, so the users may not have the rights they think they do here (and probably shouldn’t, given the courts aren’t funded to pursue imaginary internet money).
I am thinking about how over the years we stopped owning digital purchases like music and books, and instead moved to a model where the service gives unlimited access to the good in exchange for a one time payment. At first it was a few fringe services, and now this is basically the norm when it comes to digital purchases.
How far would we be from a future where a brick and mortar "banks" offer their standard services, but also a "fancy account" that feels more attractive but doesn't actually work like a bank account anymore.
It won’t. It’s been outlawed since the 30s. China had its wealth management product era, and is now cracking down. Nobody financially literate should be falling for a yield farming scheme.
https://www.ipe.com/local-authorities-hold-over-1bn-in-icela...
(why would a UK council keep its money in an Icelandic bank? Higher interest rates. Where did the higher interest rates come from? Higher risk.)
If a platform wants people to lend money to them, they should be a licensed (and FDIC-insured) credit institution.
No. In most systems, depositors are first. In America, banks don’t go bankrupt, but instead go into court-supervised FDIC receivership.
I have some sympathy for those who lost money in the first few crypto failures. At this point, it’s fools being separated from their money.
This is why Western governments have bank insurance schemes to make the depositors whole in these cases.
Fees don't exactly count unless they are outrageous. Bank fees are usually fixed. Like $20 wire fee.
12k cash. You can withdraw to another financial institution without restriction.
So what? It's your money. Why would you have to pay a goddamn 0.5% plus whatever over anything over that amount?
Similar to the way Merrill Lynch was forced into a shotgun marriage with Bank of America to avoid a collapse, and a number of similar firms during the collapse of Wall Street.
Yeah the Merrill Lynch one I am more familiar with and how much it has cost BoA
As in: none of the scum responsible was strung up and all the dipshits that caused all of it were bailed out, you mean.
"23.3. Please note that in particular, any of your losses caused by any of the following events, including but not limited to: "
" loss of profits, sales, business, business opportunity or revenue; " (they made this section a lighter hard to read gray than the rest of their TOS)
https://www.vauld.com/legal/terms-and-conditions
Even Celsius was more straightforward
"In the event that Celsius becomes bankrupt, enters liquidation or is otherwise unable to repay its obligations, any Eligible Digital Assets used in the Earn Service or as collateral under the Borrow Service may not be recoverable, and you may not have any legal remedies or rights in connection with Celsius’ obligations to you other than your rights as a creditor of Celsius under any applicable laws."
https://celsius.network/terms-of-use
The people whose withdrawals are suspended are NOT depositors. They’re unsecured creditors, the terms of such services generally say they transfer the right in the tokens to the exchange or lending co.
These companies aren’t banks. They should not have been allowed to grow as they did; they were obvious ponzis. Had they had the regulations you advocate they could never have formed in the first place, or they never would have got capital.
At least when Full Tilt Poker was raided the previous decade the online gamblers didn't pretend Full Tilt was some kind of depository bank.
It's less bad overall if the company suspends withdrawals and tries to sort it out in an orderly manner than if it just hastily liquidated everything to survive the run until the moment of running out of assets to deliver.
This is a matter for Singaporean bankruptcy law. This company seems to not have been registered as a bank or whatever the equivalent in local finreg terms is, so you'll just have to file with the Singaporean court and hope.
Earn Interest On Your Crypto. Earn the industry’s highest interest rates on major cryptocurrencies. Weekly Payouts. Interest is calculated daily, and paid out weekly on all your tokens. Withdraw any amount at any time while you earn interest.
They were paying about 12% on USDT.
Regulated deposit taking institutions have rules on what they're allowed to do with that loaned money.
Governments may insure those that loaned money, because a bank is inherently unstable, it borrows short, but lends long.
So any "bank run" where all depositors (creditors) want their funds back will break the bank, because it will be unable to do the same thing for the loans that it has.
None of this is new.
I think in this case, it would be fine to call it "money" in quotes too.
cf. this informative documentary[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It's_a_Wonderful_Life
Well...
Governments and banks can fall, or change their monetary policies, at any time - and your currency today can literally have no value tomorrow (recent examples include Indian demonetization, Argentina, Venezuela, Zimbabwe) How do you know it won't happen to your country?
The irony is rich in this one.
However, if you're sitting comfortably in a Western country that runs free and fair elections? This is your "only you can prevent forest fires" moment. It's part of your freedom that you have the responsibility to participate in keeping the fraudulent and incompetent out of your democracy. This includes not letting yourself get seduced by populists or youtubers with weird economic theories. And also not pretending that collapse is imminent simply because oil prices have gone up.
(It's also not clear that actual loss was a big problem of Indian demonetization, just the inconvenience of the exchange process)
4% of the world population, and most of this site's users, live in the USA, where free and fair elections, along with human rights, are being turned down this year.
This is precisely the sort of hyperbole OP is describing.
> where free and fair elections, along with human rights, are being turned down this year
Pure, uncut, refined hysterical hyperbolic nonsense
Republicans ran in elections on "stack the supreme court with people who will enact our values".
Republicans ran in elections on "our values are ban abortions".
Republicans win election.
Republicans winning an election, stacking the court with their people, having them do exactly what they promised to do and enacting their campaign promises is democracy in action, not the suspension of democracy.
If you dont want it, everyone needs to vote for what they do want.
Is your electoral system fair if it is this gerrymandered?
Furthermore, most states and districts are “safe” for one of the two main parties. Of the remaining places, a voter can choose between either of only two parties. If neither represent them, then they have no one to vote for. This situation is not “free” in the true sense of the word. You do not have a free vote, and in most places your vote is meaningless.
Worse still is the fact that one of your political parties openly attempted to overthrow the result of the election in order to stay in power, and the other party has not brought the full force of the law to bare for fear of speaking civil unrest.
It is not hyperbolic to warn Americans of the extreme danger their democracy is in, nor of its inherent weakness due to the rather antiquated voting system it uses.
Stacking a court goes against the separation of power that the three estates were supposed to uphold. No party that openly tries to pack a court against the will of the people should get a single vote from anyone who cares about freedom.
America is sailing very close to the wind and Americans should not be complacent about the risks they face
Tho their optimism point is to be happy with what you have and calm down and so on. As if the way we have our current rights was gotten by calming down.
Sure, that's fair, I'll even agree that the tone of many of these pieces is hyperbolic. But I'm not going to stick my head in the sand and pretend that things can't go bad, because that's a sure fire way to ensure they eventually do go bad.
As if America doesn’t have so many people paycheck to paycheck, in poverty, etc. and that’s just America
You are aware that the competition is for the most electoral college seats. I am fairly certain that the Democrats were aware of this for the election as well. Yet armed with this knowledege they still lost to the worst run campaign in a century fronted by an actual clown.
> Is your electoral system fair if it is this gerrymandered?
I mean, the people elected to office litterally promised to gerrymander. If the people elect someone who brings in proportional representation will you have a problem with that?
> Furthermore, most states and districts are “safe” for one of the two main parties.
Hang on, those "safe" districts are "safe" because an overwhelming majority of people vote for the party that wins... That is democracy! Are you arguing for or against democracy?
> No party that openly tries to pack a court against the will of the people should get a single vote from anyone who cares about freedom
Litteral campaign promise, and people voted for it in numbers, it is the will of the people.
> It is not hyperbolic to warn Americans of the extreme danger their democracy is in
The problem is democracy itself. People are voting for shitty hacky demi-gods selling them a used car that runs on snake oil.
Every side of every agenda has become infected with this horrible disease, but what is happening is the logical conclusion of what happens when you combine democracy with an erosion of education. It didnt start this year or with trump etc. It has been happening for decades.
The population is now so poorly equiped to navigate the most basic of tasks that a foreign power can swing an election by spending $100,000 on some facebook ads.
What changed this year? The most commone argument for the election not being free and fair here is "electoral college vs popular vote". Some have even backed up the very point by showing that this situation has been persistent for the last 20 years, so ... what changed this year? Did they add electoral college votes to red states or something?
Free and fair elections - personally I think of elections not being free and fair someone standing next to you as you vote saying vote for vlad or we will kill your whole familiy or votes being thrown in the bin. As far as I am aware none of that is happening.
Its pretty bad faith to say Republicans claiming electoral fraud is the Big Lie but when Dems say its Not a Free and Fair Election that it is an irrefutable evidence and vice versa. Simultaneously holding the belief that the elctions are Not Free and Fair while claiming that they are indeed Free and Fair depending upon which party is claiming it is rank hypocracy at best.
> …not being free and fair…vote for vlad…or we will kill your whole familiy or votes being thrown in the bin…
You gave an extremely specific coercive tactic and basic corruption. How does it follow if neither happening, then, what, things are fine?
This is reminiscent of the neoliberal moderate to conservative status-quo-seeking intellectual and incredibly lazy common talking point. A point echoed by Bill Maher to Jordan Peterson to Bill Gates. “Things aren’t so bad. So be okay with that.” The classic Stephen Pinker elitist “optimism”. So a point made since forever.
> Its pretty bad faith…when Dems say its Not a Free and Fair Election that it is an irrefutable evidence…
If Dems say they are ‘Free and Fair’ with anything, they are liars, as usual. I am going much farther than you in my denigration of the Dems. What’s the point of this paragraph being written to me?
If one goes back and listens to Trump speeches from the 2016 race he actually sounded a lot like a bonkers version of Bernie Sanders in terms of the way he tried to appeal to the economic distress of many potential voters. If there was a more representative voting system – such as that in Germany – you might end up with policies that Americans actually want by having multiple parties that can represent all Americans.
A politician is only as good as your ability to fire them. You can't fire yours very easily.
And if you think democracy is the problem, why not take a look at the difference between two oil-rich nations, Norway and Libya, or two neighbours, North and South Korea.
Explain how the popular vote not mattering for president is free and fair?
Why are you choosing only one minority to care about? State citizens of Wyoming? Why not any other minority? Why not minority religions, colors of skin, political views, gender identity, sexuality, disabilities, mental health conditions? What makes not caring about these minorities fair?
Why is Wyoming even a state? Have you read up on the politics of how we got to 50 states? Especially the civil war and post civil war time period? How is that fair?
How is DC not having a voice fair? How is Puerto Rico, Guam, and the other territories not having any sort of proper voice fair?
> There are obvious reasons why you don’t want sparsely-populated stretches of contiguous territory to feel disenfranchised on account of their smaller population.
You and others can’t keep saying this stuff as if it’s true by default just because we are brainwashed into this as kids in school and in every day life. Again I ask. Why is that a worry for minority populations but not any of the variety of other minority populations I listed before?
If you do feel that populations like lgbtq, different minority skin colors, different mental health conditions, disabilities, also shouldn’t feel dosenfranchised, then how come that’s exactly what’s happening with some of these populations with the current system of giving a ton of power to rural low population conservatives? Like lgbtq, some minorites, etc. It’s contradictory logic.
I wonder what exactly would happen if the feelings of these rural people are felt to be disenfranchised. What are the obvious reasons you assert? Why are those reasons better than myself and many others feeling disenfranchised with the current senate and electoral college system who aren’t in rural places?
Put another way:
The Democratic candidate won the popular vote and Electoral College in:
1992 1996 2008 2012 2020
The Democratic candidate won the popular vote and the Republican candidate won the Electoral College in:
2000 2016
The Republican candidate won the popular vote and the Electoral College in:
2004
That isnt about fairness of the elections, that is fairness of the system of representational democracy implemented.
E.g. if popular vote was what mattered, more Republicans in California would bother voting.
So you can’t really claim “Democrats would win the popular vote elections”
That said, I'm not opposed to eliminating EC. I think both EC and popular vote have their pluses and minuses. But then, I'm not an American, so...
Democracy for me, not for thee.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2018/09/11/many-democrats-...
Democracy for me, not for thee.
In their study of voter confidence in national elections 2000 through 2012, Michael Sances and Charles Stewart found that while most supporters of both the winner and loser of an election are very confident in that their own vote was counted correctly, the confidence of those on the losing side slightly decreases. Moreover, the confidence of those on the winning side increases significantly from its pre-election level.
Touché, the "Russians forced deplorables to vote for Trump" is another mass delusion.
Pretty much the only good thing you can say about Hillary is that she didn't lead a mass of cannon fodder democrats, and a select group of conspirators to assassinate her own VP.
your comment assumes a perfectly functioning system and ignores the many non-hyperbolic, very real and very rational concerns which our citizens of all stripes have explained repeatedly.
the dems want to murder babies
Now is that hyperbolic, legitimate, rational reasonable? It is a concerns which our citizens of all stripes have explained repeatedly.
> your comment assumes a perfectly functioning system
Actually the system is functioning shockingly well in the face of a rabid population hooked on fox/cnn talking heads then voting in bad actors promising to be bad actors.
For some absolutely baffling reason the will of the people at this point in time is to elect batshit crazy representitives of all stripes. The best spent dollar of the billion or so spent on a presidential election cycle would be to try and figure out why that is and what you can do to get people to vote in their self interest and not against.
> Now is that hyperbolic, legitimate, rational reasonable?
obviously that is hyperbolic, irrational, and unreasonable.
assuming that you’re referring to abortion—those are not babies and it is absurdly hyperbolic to imply that an entire segment (81,268,924 people voted Dem in 2020) that more than 81 Million people want to murder babies. Obviously you can see how ridiculously hyperbolic and irrational your statement is.
as for the rest of your comment, it would appear like you agree that we have anything but a perfectly functioning system, even if you chose to ignore the larger obvious systemic problems which have been repeatedly and reasonably addressed by countless rational citizens.
so, with that said, even tho it’s clear that you are not engaging at all in good faith, and it would seem you are indeed attempting to paint entire massive segments of our citizens and their absolutely legitimate concerns as if they are all somehow unreasonable—your gp post still assumes a perfectly functioning system, and i believe a very convincing and strong argument can (and has repeatedly) been made that this is not currently the case.
I concur with the sibling comment. It’s hard to respond to this or my last comment because of how it appears your comments are made in bad faith.
There is a real problem. It is far from foregone.
Treating hypotheticals as actuals, particularly with risks, shortens one's time horizons and raises one's risk tolerance. It's why people who believe these tales of woe and peril, which occur pretty much every generation in every society, tend to gamble on things like crypto versus investing for the long term.
The overview & illustrative scenario of the R plan to implement minority rule. [0]
The SCOTUS conservative group has already indicated that this is next.
This is very far under the radar and not even close to hyperbole. Kind of like COVIT-19 in Dec-2019/Jan-2020 - the only people saying this was serious were treated like hyperbolic cranks. Same in Hungary before Orban took over - democracy is already dead there.
[0] https://www.rawstory.com/supreme-court-election/?utm_source=...
https://www.npr.org/2022/06/30/1107648753/supreme-court-nort...
However, this is not likely to affect the value of the dollar in the medium term.
"Are being" versus "at risk of."
> this is not likely to affect the value of the dollar in the medium term
True. And to the extent it would, crypto is a terrible hedge. (It's a risk asset.)
Does HN publish this statistic? My guess is that >50% of users/traffic to this site is outside of the USA
It absolutely halted growth and immediately led to a much lower growth level from which India has not recovered, and possibly never will, at least under the current government.
And with high inflation (even pre pandemic) and a huge young population, the destruction of growth was an absolute disaster for India which absolutely needs to cash in on its youth right now before they all grow old and need to be financially supported themselves.
My understanding was that everyone could wait in line to exchange their 500/1000 rupee notes for 100 or 2000 notes. The lines were long and the banks were frequently out of money to exchange from, but I thought they could also deposit it to their bank if they had one (letting the bank deal with the demonetized notes).
I know there are also a lot of unbanked in India, but presumably the period for exchanging demonetized notes was long enough to allow them to exchange any cash savings they had.. was this not the case?
I'm not sure it was actually a net-negative for the long term growth of the Indian economy, as the resulting lack of trust in physical cash accelerated the digitalization of Indian money and faster adoption of e-payments with Rupay and UPI, which should improve economic growth.
As a person who lived through the Zimbabwe crash, this right here was the problem. People voted to throw out the tyrant and he "found the votes he needed." This economy is reeling from all the money that the previous administration printed (which was precisely what started the snowball in Zimbabwe).
What is lost to the crypto crowd is that sometimes "what is good for me" is not always "what is good for us." Voting yourself more money is very good way to contribute to a collapse (as Charles Munger points out[1]). This seems lost to the generally active votebase, too.
[1]: https://youtu.be/GNTczyGLdhc
The currency they held didn't lost it's value. It was just wholly lost. But the lost currency kept it's value.
Enslaved to work because of scams, such a dream world.
The argument that the crypto people can make (and I am still one) is that over a lifetime I feel I am certain to lose ~40% of my cash to government inflation (possibly more), people who are incompetent will get automatic handouts every so often to stay in charge & vast sums will go to fighting wars in places I don't want to fight wars.
I'd rather take a system where there is a 10% chance to lose everything and people can only create money according to pre-agreed rules. No stealth taxes, I want to know who is paying and how much. If that involves concentrating the risk it is worth it. Depending on how much you lost you might still come out ahead in such a world.
I'd be perfectly eager to take that side of the debate if you want to argue about it, but that isn't really what the topic was in this thread. I was observing that subjecting yourself to a voluntary wealth tax could reasonably be a worse option than taking a risk of losing everything in one ugly crash.
That isn't a crazy position. It does require a tolerance of risk.
> Without printing money we need to raise government revenues by close to 50% which is a rather drastic increase in taxation.
People are already paying that tax though - the wealth that the government is moving around had to come from somewhere. We know the government isn't creating it otherwise there'd be no need for the money printing to happen. We just aren't sure who specifically is paying how much.
So it would be a drastic increase in observed tax, but probably not a big change to most people's lifestyles.
There's no system which benefits from frauds and scams.
NOT YOUR KEYS
NOT YOUR COINS
YOUR WORTHLESS COINS, because the ponzis sucked the liquidity from the market.
Lots of the people that had money on Voyager thought it was legit because it's listed on the Canadian stock market, thought there was some kind of FIDC insurance, etc. So because they didn't see much warning sign that specifically Voyager was in danger (even if there was!), they don't think anything applies to them. They might not read crypto news every single day or every week.
There's also inertia when it comes to finance. People might have stopped buying/selling coins through this crazy market, but they decided to park their money somewhere (on an exchange) without thinking that those go down too. They have been used for many years of coins going up and down, but not the actual exchanges going down. Most of those people were not in crypto when Mt Gox went down.
Of course you can see tons of people as well that have been trying to get their money out of Voyager/Celcius for a few weeks before the crash, but there was restrictions on how much you could remove every day, so they got caught while there was still money left.
1600 US banks collapsed in early 1990s and 500 in 2009. Most customer deposits were insured.