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The whole idea was to become a middleman to a ponzi scheme and charge a performance fee. They described what they are doing in their documentation, but the cor

The whole idea was to become a middleman to a ponzi scheme and charge a performance fee. They described what they are doing in their documentation, but the core ethical problem here is that the only users that would use their service are those incapable of understanding how UST/Terra worked, because anyone capable of understanding would just deposit funds directly and get higher APR for the same risk! Extremely predatory. UST fooled many ...not very bright people who genuinely didn't realize it's a ponzi scheme - but obviously smart and technically proficient founders of Stablegains' have no such excuse. Zero room for doubt - they fully knew it's certain to collapse eventually, banking on their legal terms to protect them from liability while privately profiting as long as it works. Founders of Stablegains belong in prison and everything they own should be confiscated and divided among victims. Sadly they are probably safe - as knowing the inevitability of collapse they must have felt their legalese to be ironclad.

Ekaros 4y ago
I just wish the liability could be extended to enablers that is funders... Sometimes I think companies should not really be limited liability...
- nootropicat 4y ago
  I think investors probably didn't know. High safe defi yield existed for most of 2020 and 2021 - during that time it would be legit. It's possible that's how it happened - first plan based on safe yield that disappeared (exactly because it was high and safe), but instead of closing down founders decided to become middlemen to a ponzi.
  - nrmitchi 4y ago
    I feel like “safe” needs a giant asterisk applied to it in this sentence. Just because something didn’t explode previously, doesn’t mean it was safe until now.
    - nootropicat 4y ago
      No, perfectly safe three digit APR yield was the norm for months, and high double digit - for about 1.5 years. Checking the contracts was easy, as usually they were copied from other projects and thus known. Often capital was locked doing nothing at all, sometimes just providing liquidity in a lp pair. Took a while for the absurd risk premium to go down to its real value of ~0, crashing safe yields. Ironically, this is partially what made UST so big - because to many people it looked like this: (1) months of three digit APR - 'obviously unsafe' ('common sense' - high yield is sus, smells like ponzi) (2) it wasn't a ponzi. Nothing bad happens. Many people make bank. Some have no idea what's safe and were just gambling, some make informed decisions (3) eventually, the person in question feels stupid for missing free money and decides to put money in with no deep understanding (4) safe yields crater from a combination of people like that + slow moving, but smart, funds that started to deposit hundreds of millions (5) person in question deposits into the UST ponzi scheme by extrapolating safety record of non-ponzi farms that are now gone, due to a category error - 'it's defi and it was safe for so long, therefore UST is safe' (6) not realizing it's a ponzi scheme they don't even try to exit when the gig is up. Massive loss. Ironically I now see many examples of the same category error but applied in reverse - many people that lost on Luna think its collapse proved that defi is, in fact, fundamentally unsafe, when the reason they lost is because they put their money into a ponzi scheme that leveraged defi brand for marketing.
      - Khoth 4y ago
        Why were people willing to pay a three digit APR yield to borrow assets then just keep those assets doing nothing at all?
        renonce 4y ago
        High APR = High Total Value Locked (TVL) = Potential to steal someone's money = Attract crypto investments
        nootropicat 4y ago
        Nobody paid that in borrowing, that APR was generated by minting new tokens that could be sold to someone else.
faeriechangling 4y ago
I don't see how stablecoins are fundamentally a ponzi scheme, it's really not hard to imagine a sustainable stablecoin business model - reinvest what people pay into the stablecoin, keep risk low so you don't lose your principal and end up unable to repay debtors, keep enough in reserves that the stablecoin doesn't collapse in a bank run, and cross your fingers. Now, you certainly COULD turn this entire scheme into a ponzi scheme, and I would be freaking shocked if it didn't turn out several stablecoins were Ponzi schemes, but it's totally possible for a stablecoin to sustain itself without constantly seeking new deposits in principle. Stablecoins are literally modernised promissory notes and the people hawking them are unregulated banks. It's incredible the people selling these stablecoins are not being regulated as if they are banks.
- renonce 4y ago
  > I don't see how stablecoins are fundamentally a ponzi scheme Of course they are not, but UST is. Stablecoins are different from each other. USDT, USDC and DAI are all collateralized (at least partially). UST is minted out of void by burning LUNA, creating demand for LUNA so creators get a profit and turn away, slashing all UST investors. It is an outright ponzi scheme hidden behind layers of DeFi jargons and borrowing trust from true stablecoins like USDC while being fundamentally different from any other responsible stablecoin.
- nootropicat 4y ago
  UST wasn't a stablecoin, it was a ponzi scheme along with Luna. The invention here is obfuscation - move the exponential ponzi growth part into a separate token. In a very straightforward ponzi $2M coming after $1M would allow initial owners to cash out with a 2x gain. Which is too obvious. UST instead would transfer all $2M to Luna sellers (real wealth) while printing just enough UST to provide 20% APR to previous depositors (may have been a bit higher in the past). What happens when some old depositor wants to cash out? Money comes out of new money that's coming in. As long as there's enough new money it works (the fundamental ponzi property). The system also utilizes some liquidity buffers (liquidity pools with other stablecoins) that can absorb temporary volatility in a redemption demand - which works as long as money flow is positive. When that stops being true, and liquidity buffers run out - both UST and Luna started collapsing, with 100% of inflows redirected to UST sellers. Viewed as a system - all difference to a traditional, straightforward ponzi disappears. Empirically, this obfuscation is so successful from the marketing perspective algostables with meaningless changes (or even not) will continue to proliferate, although it may take years for any to get as big as UST.
Terr_ 4y ago
By definition, a Ponzi scheme involves some kind of reporting fraud where you're being lied-to about how your investment was converted and how much of that converted asset there is. I'm not saying these aren't some other kind of scam but lots of people use "Ponzi" as if it meant any kind of scam... And generally speaking "how many thingy-coins do I own" is the one thing cryptocurrencies focus on making very difficult. TLDR: Everybody overuses "Ponzi" and it annoys me.
- humbleMouse 4y ago
- xnorswap 4y ago
  If everybody mis-uses a word then they're not mis-using it at all, the meaning of the word has simply changed.
- nootropicat 4y ago
  Fraud logically can't be part of the mechanism of a ponzi scheme itself. A ponzi scheme is any financial scheme where old investors are paid exclusively by new investors, and without new investments the system doesn't generate any income at all. There are many different variations. Lying about source of potential gains concerns marketing of it - which is something external and done by humans, and not part of the internal distribution of money flows. How can an algorithm itself commit fraud? It can't.
  - Terr_ 4y ago
    > A ponzi scheme is ANY financial scheme where old investors are paid exclusively by new investors No, that assumption (emphasis added) is popular but utterly false. In a Ponzi scheme, cash from new buy-ins gets FRADULENTLY reported to existing participants as dividends from the underlying business or investment. That fraudulent reporting of fake-dividends is essential to the scheme, because it's how the scammer lures in successive waves of investors to keep it perpetuated. Unsustainable optimistic speculation != Ponzi Scheme
quickthrower2 4y ago
Did you need to be an accredited investor to “invest” with them? Or should they have required this?

Ekaros 4y ago

I just wish the liability could be extended to enablers that is funders... Sometimes I think companies should not really be limited liability...

nootropicat 4y ago
I think investors probably didn't know. High safe defi yield existed for most of 2020 and 2021 - during that time it would be legit. It's possible that's how it happened - first plan based on safe yield that disappeared (exactly because it was high and safe), but instead of closing down founders decided to become middlemen to a ponzi.
- nrmitchi 4y ago
  I feel like “safe” needs a giant asterisk applied to it in this sentence. Just because something didn’t explode previously, doesn’t mean it was safe until now.
  - nootropicat 4y ago
    No, perfectly safe three digit APR yield was the norm for months, and high double digit - for about 1.5 years. Checking the contracts was easy, as usually they were copied from other projects and thus known. Often capital was locked doing nothing at all, sometimes just providing liquidity in a lp pair. Took a while for the absurd risk premium to go down to its real value of ~0, crashing safe yields. Ironically, this is partially what made UST so big - because to many people it looked like this: (1) months of three digit APR - 'obviously unsafe' ('common sense' - high yield is sus, smells like ponzi) (2) it wasn't a ponzi. Nothing bad happens. Many people make bank. Some have no idea what's safe and were just gambling, some make informed decisions (3) eventually, the person in question feels stupid for missing free money and decides to put money in with no deep understanding (4) safe yields crater from a combination of people like that + slow moving, but smart, funds that started to deposit hundreds of millions (5) person in question deposits into the UST ponzi scheme by extrapolating safety record of non-ponzi farms that are now gone, due to a category error - 'it's defi and it was safe for so long, therefore UST is safe' (6) not realizing it's a ponzi scheme they don't even try to exit when the gig is up. Massive loss. Ironically I now see many examples of the same category error but applied in reverse - many people that lost on Luna think its collapse proved that defi is, in fact, fundamentally unsafe, when the reason they lost is because they put their money into a ponzi scheme that leveraged defi brand for marketing.
    - Khoth 4y ago
      Why were people willing to pay a three digit APR yield to borrow assets then just keep those assets doing nothing at all?
      - renonce 4y ago
        High APR = High Total Value Locked (TVL) = Potential to steal someone's money = Attract crypto investments
      - nootropicat 4y ago
        Nobody paid that in borrowing, that APR was generated by minting new tokens that could be sold to someone else.

faeriechangling 4y ago

I don't see how stablecoins are fundamentally a ponzi scheme, it's really not hard to imagine a sustainable stablecoin business model - reinvest what people pay into the stablecoin, keep risk low so you don't lose your principal and end up unable to repay debtors, keep enough in reserves that the stablecoin doesn't collapse in a bank run, and cross your fingers. Now, you certainly COULD turn this entire scheme into a ponzi scheme, and I would be freaking shocked if it didn't turn out several stablecoins were Ponzi schemes, but it's totally possible for a stablecoin to sustain itself without constantly seeking new deposits in principle. Stablecoins are literally modernised promissory notes and the people hawking them are unregulated banks. It's incredible the people selling these stablecoins are not being regulated as if they are banks.

renonce 4y ago
> I don't see how stablecoins are fundamentally a ponzi scheme Of course they are not, but UST is. Stablecoins are different from each other. USDT, USDC and DAI are all collateralized (at least partially). UST is minted out of void by burning LUNA, creating demand for LUNA so creators get a profit and turn away, slashing all UST investors. It is an outright ponzi scheme hidden behind layers of DeFi jargons and borrowing trust from true stablecoins like USDC while being fundamentally different from any other responsible stablecoin.
nootropicat 4y ago
UST wasn't a stablecoin, it was a ponzi scheme along with Luna. The invention here is obfuscation - move the exponential ponzi growth part into a separate token. In a very straightforward ponzi $2M coming after $1M would allow initial owners to cash out with a 2x gain. Which is too obvious. UST instead would transfer all $2M to Luna sellers (real wealth) while printing just enough UST to provide 20% APR to previous depositors (may have been a bit higher in the past). What happens when some old depositor wants to cash out? Money comes out of new money that's coming in. As long as there's enough new money it works (the fundamental ponzi property). The system also utilizes some liquidity buffers (liquidity pools with other stablecoins) that can absorb temporary volatility in a redemption demand - which works as long as money flow is positive. When that stops being true, and liquidity buffers run out - both UST and Luna started collapsing, with 100% of inflows redirected to UST sellers. Viewed as a system - all difference to a traditional, straightforward ponzi disappears. Empirically, this obfuscation is so successful from the marketing perspective algostables with meaningless changes (or even not) will continue to proliferate, although it may take years for any to get as big as UST.

Terr_ 4y ago

By definition, a Ponzi scheme involves some kind of reporting fraud where you're being lied-to about how your investment was converted and how much of that converted asset there is. I'm not saying these aren't some other kind of scam but lots of people use "Ponzi" as if it meant any kind of scam... And generally speaking "how many thingy-coins do I own" is the one thing cryptocurrencies focus on making very difficult. TLDR: Everybody overuses "Ponzi" and it annoys me.

humbleMouse 4y ago
xnorswap 4y ago
If everybody mis-uses a word then they're not mis-using it at all, the meaning of the word has simply changed.
nootropicat 4y ago
Fraud logically can't be part of the mechanism of a ponzi scheme itself. A ponzi scheme is any financial scheme where old investors are paid exclusively by new investors, and without new investments the system doesn't generate any income at all. There are many different variations. Lying about source of potential gains concerns marketing of it - which is something external and done by humans, and not part of the internal distribution of money flows. How can an algorithm itself commit fraud? It can't.
- Terr_ 4y ago
  > A ponzi scheme is ANY financial scheme where old investors are paid exclusively by new investors No, that assumption (emphasis added) is popular but utterly false. In a Ponzi scheme, cash from new buy-ins gets FRADULENTLY reported to existing participants as dividends from the underlying business or investment. That fraudulent reporting of fake-dividends is essential to the scheme, because it's how the scammer lures in successive waves of investors to keep it perpetuated. Unsustainable optimistic speculation != Ponzi Scheme

quickthrower2 4y ago

Did you need to be an accredited investor to “invest” with them? Or should they have required this?