4 ms·

Yea, but to me it sounds like the same problem as a bank run. If everyone tried to retrieve their money from the bank at the same time they wouldn't have enough

Yea, but to me it sounds like the same problem as a bank run. If everyone tried to retrieve their money from the bank at the same time they wouldn't have enough money.

salawat 4y ago
Correct. These exchanges are banks, which are reliant on statistical multiplexing. There is quite literally zero difference between the sets of failure states that "stablecoins" are vulnerable to. ...which makes you wonder: why the cryptographic overhead at all? Oh wait... Because places want to be banks, without adhering to the regulations thereof...
- throwanem 4y ago
  > statistical multiplexing "Fractional reserve."
trompetenaccoun 4y ago
That's true for banks but it's not a similar mechanism in any way. You should look into the term 'algorithmic stablecoin', these are basically a scam and don't work, which is why they keep losing their peg. There are other examples long before the media started paying attention and people in the crypto space have warned about this for ages. Of course, some might call fractional reserve banking a scam as well but what these algorithmic stablecoins are doing isn't the same thing as the credit creation by private banks. It's more like they tried to create a "decentralized" central bank. I put that in quotations because the ones I know aren't actually decentralized either, they just use such buzzwords to trick traders. Not all stablecoins work that way. There are more reputable ones like DAI or USDC. Actually the first stablecoins were all collateralized, the shananigans started in 2017 during the last bubble and now there are even more of these scammy projects because the market has grown so much. Adoption brings in a lot of newbies with money, and that in turn attracts charlatans of course. You can get a feel for what level of education the general public has when even in a tech forum most people don't understand anything about the economics and mechanisms of all these projects.

Yea, but to me it sounds like the same problem as a bank run. If everyone tried to retrieve their money from the bank at the same time they wouldn't have enough money.

salawat 4y ago

Correct. These exchanges are banks, which are reliant on statistical multiplexing. There is quite literally zero difference between the sets of failure states that "stablecoins" are vulnerable to. ...which makes you wonder: why the cryptographic overhead at all? Oh wait... Because places want to be banks, without adhering to the regulations thereof...

throwanem 4y ago
> statistical multiplexing "Fractional reserve."

trompetenaccoun 4y ago

That's true for banks but it's not a similar mechanism in any way. You should look into the term 'algorithmic stablecoin', these are basically a scam and don't work, which is why they keep losing their peg. There are other examples long before the media started paying attention and people in the crypto space have warned about this for ages. Of course, some might call fractional reserve banking a scam as well but what these algorithmic stablecoins are doing isn't the same thing as the credit creation by private banks. It's more like they tried to create a "decentralized" central bank. I put that in quotations because the ones I know aren't actually decentralized either, they just use such buzzwords to trick traders. Not all stablecoins work that way. There are more reputable ones like DAI or USDC. Actually the first stablecoins were all collateralized, the shananigans started in 2017 during the last bubble and now there are even more of these scammy projects because the market has grown so much. Adoption brings in a lot of newbies with money, and that in turn attracts charlatans of course. You can get a feel for what level of education the general public has when even in a tech forum most people don't understand anything about the economics and mechanisms of all these projects.