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Y Combinator will let founders receive funds in stablecoins
- grim_io 9mo agoWhy not in gold while we're at it? Both are equally stupid, and you have to exchange them to buy most of the things you might need.
- mikkupikku 9mo agoGuess they want cryptobros, not gold bugs.
- cheonn638 9mo ago> Why not in gold while we're at it? Crypto more hype-able
- iwontberude 9mo agoWhy not a gold backed stable coin like PAXG?
- Supermancho 9mo agoWhy? Because the US stable coins are an abstraction on top of US treasuries. It's effectively trading in the US debt market, not trading in crypto-hype. The Fed is interested in converting the debt to another medium, for obvious reasons. Stablecoin looks to be the leader, since a number of the new administration have talked about it in the last decade (re: Scott Besset stablecoin speech). I can understand why some companies want their runway in a currency that may go up during a transition (a more favorable exchange rate). There's little lossage in the exchange of USDT/USDC in the short term. Seems like a hedge strategy.
- daveguy 8mo ago> ... US stable coins are an abstraction on top of US treasuries... Nope. Not until these companies allow an independent external audit. I don't take "trust me" from a crypto bro as proof of backing funds. Oh, and the current administration is clearly corrupt, so this administration wanting to convert the US to bozo bucks isn't one for the plus column.
- Supermancho 8mo agoThe why stands. If the Fed got involved in transitioning the currency, which seems MORE likely under this administration (because of the grift and corruption), then they will be negotiating with the stable coin providers and the grift will follow the normal trajectory to the moon or whatever. The arbitrary "not until some independent shows the paperwork" will never be on the table.
- daveguy 8mo agoIndependent audits aren't arbitrary. They're the standard by which you can tell whether an organization is lying about their finances. Double entry accounting and receipts makes it pretty difficult to fake especially when the claim is as simple as "don't worry, we hold the backing value in treasuries." Of course, the independent part has to be truly independent and not paid for by the audited. But they refuse independent audits.
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- Octoth0rpe 8mo ago> I don't take "trust me" from a crypto bro as proof of backing funds This is a good distillation of the inherent issue going forward with crypto. The people in tech I trust _least_ (cryptobros) are selling in a service that I require the _highest_ level of trust (finance). It's a very bad sales pitch.
- mothballed 8mo agoYou don't buy stablecoins because you trust them. You buy them because a greater idiot will. For that reason, I wouldn't be particularly bothered about getting them instead of dollars, though I'd try not to hold on to them terribly long.
- direwolf20 8mo agoYou buy bitcoin because you think there's a greater idiot. You buy stablecoins as a step in the path to buying bitcoin. You don't buy and hold stablecoins.
- observationist 9mo agoI mean, asking for $500 in gold every paycheck would be kinda cool, or getting gold coinage each pay cycle on a rolling basis, as many coins as your repeated $500 contributions buy. It'd be friction against spending, a little bit of investing, in the case of gold, but friction against spending with crypto only makes sense if you don't lose a lot on moving it into a real bank account.
- ceejayoz 8mo agoYou can do this, today, if you want, via an IRA or some 401(k)s.
- inkcapmushroom 8mo agoYeah but my 401(k) tax statement paperwork doesn't make me feel like a pirate.
- cheonn638 8mo ago> Yeah but my 401(k) tax statement paperwork doesn't make me feel like a pirate. solo 401(k) is for you
- bandrami 8mo agoIf you want actual physical custody of gold you'll be paying a lot more than the alleged spot price; what you buy on the metals market is a certificate against gold held by a clearinghouse (which certificates are significantly oversold relative to their reserves, a topic goldbugs will do anything to avoid talking about).
- defrost 8mo agoPerth Mint runs click and collect for bullion bars (say 10 ounce) against the AU market spot price. It costs more as I'd have to drive 250 km round trip to pick it up (or pay extra for transport). * https://www.perthmint.com/shop/bullion/cast-bars/ https://www.perthmint.com/shop/bullion/cast-bars/
- mrguyorama 8mo agoYC connected people aren't as invested into gold as they are crypto.
- nemild 8mo agoAnswering this seriously. Most goods today are denominated in fiat, so stablecoins are a better fit than gold. And at this stage, stablecoins are great for easy money movement (rather than holding in crypto). I actually think most people won't even know that crypto rails have been used to move their money, with stablecoins like tcp/ip for money movement.
- throw03172019 9mo agoIf they aren’t a crypto startup where it’s normal to pay others in stable coins, what is the benefit?
- JohnTHaller 9mo agoHyping crypto and "stable" coins
- daveguy 8mo agoYup. That's it. Because people are realizing crypto isn't worth the effort to support malware authors, money launderers, and North Korea's nuclear program. And if you didn't know that's what you're supporting with the hype train, well now you do. Those folks all love and greatly benefit from difficult to audit financial instruments.
- verdverm 8mo agoCircular funding / money flows YC -> Circle -> Coinbase -> YC
- cobbal 8mo agoOhhhh... So that's why it's called Y combinator.
- nailer 8mo agoAxium (YC W25) hit $100M revenue in 4-5 months, making it the fastest YC company to that milestone. Startups like that are important to YC.
- wmf 8mo agoHow do they use stablecoins?
- michaelt 8mo agoAxiom's pitch is "Trade memecoins, perpetuals, and earn yield" [1] so presumably they've hired a load of cryptocurrency-loving developers, and are eager to pay them in cryptocurrency. Of course, given that the grandparent said "If they aren’t a crypto startup" - Axiom clearly doesn't apply. [1] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/axiom https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/axiom
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- catlikesshrimp 9mo agoI hope we aren't too close to "territorial currencies" where each feudal lord was authorized (or not forbidden) to mint his own currency, which couldn't be carried over the next feud. Think awarded "miles" by your credit card, or tickets in a games center. https://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/41452/1/112.pdf https://ndl.ethernet.edu.et/bitstream/123456789/41452/1/112....
- mandevil 8mo agoDuring the Free Banking era of US history (from when Andrew Jackson killed the 2nd National Bank until the Civil War, roughly 1837-1863) essentially every company that could get their state to give them a bank charter (very very poorly regulated) could issue its own paper notes that were treated as currency, with the very poor state regulation alone responsible for ensuring that they didn't print more notes than they had specie to back up. You'll never guess, but most banks didn't actually have enough specie to back their notes, and banks constantly failed during the Free Banking era. If a bank failed then the notes value went to zero, and so notes always traded at a discount to their face value, and there were even brokers who were paid by local merchants to give them the latest correct discount rates for all the local banks (updating daily), and if a bank note got far enough away from the bank that the local broker didn't know about it, well, then it wouldn't be accepted by a local merchant. So effectively a similar result here in the capitalist, non-aristocratic US for about 15 years. This is an enormous amount of overhead in actually running an economy, which was why it was ended and we had the National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864 to try to create a more uniform currency, and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing created in 1862, etc. Because the actual businesses started to demand simpler accounting, and so more financial regulation of the banks.
- palmotea 8mo ago> You'll never guess, but most banks didn't actually have enough specie to back their notes, and banks constantly failed during the Free Banking era. If a bank failed then the notes value went to zero, and so notes always traded at a discount to their face value, and there were even brokers who were paid by local merchants to give them the latest correct discount rates for all the local banks (updating daily), and if a bank note got far enough away from the bank that the local broker didn't know about it, well, then it wouldn't be accepted by a local merchant. That sounds like a libertarian paradise. Sign us all up!
- CuriouslyC 9mo agoBetween this and Canada being dropped as an investable country shortly after the recent US/Canada fracas, I'm starting to wonder about YC's current political affiliations. Also, if you want to put your tinfoil hat on, Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell were publicly anti-Trump, and they both left months after the Trump admin took over, a very paranoid take is that the big shot VCs tied to YC made a push to "clean house" or "toe the line" and they were either gently pushed out or decided to leave because they didn't like the new vibes.
- joshribakoff 8mo agoNot endorsing conspiracy theories but one of the YC guys is an investor in flock, which is positioned to benefit from some of the recent political policies.
- n2d4 8mo agoThat's a very misleading way to say that Flock is a YC company [0]! [0] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety
- rl3 8mo agoWhere's the misleading part? What GP said is true: https://x.com/garrytan/status/1856932483864170606 https://x.com/garrytan/status/1856932483864170606
- n2d4 8mo ago> Michael Seibel and Dalton Caldwell were publicly anti-Trump Neither of these were "publicly anti-Trump" as much as Garry Tan has been. Actually, where'd you even get that from? I cannot with my life imagine that Dalton would publicly post about politics. I've googled around a bit and found nothing either.
- CuriouslyC 8mo agoMichael specifically mentions in an older video with Dalton brainstorming things they could do about Trump. I don't recall ever seeing a YC video where Garry leaks any political affiliations, though I don't follow him on social media.
- reducesuffering 8mo agoRemember when YC funded (and boosted reach of) ~50 crypto scamlike co's during the heyday of the craze? Like the Stablegains scam fiasco: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31686140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31686140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31431224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31431224 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31461634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31461634
- n2d4 8mo ago50 crypto scams? Why do you link the same one thrice, then? https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5mghcxCabxuaK4WTs/ycombinator-fraud-rates https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/5mghcxCabxuaK4WTs/...
- TacticalCoder 8mo agoIt's quite hilarious that you link to an EA forum to make your point when it's a known fact SBF was from the EA movement and they openly discussed --after the SBF/FTX/Alameda fraud was exposed-- whether scamming people to give part of the money they stole to fund things they thought would make EA participants look as white knight was acceptable or not. The best example is SBF's guru who bought a 15 million GBP mansion in the UK for the EA movement with stolen funds. Now he's keeping a very low profile because I know for a fact that up to a few years ago there was still assets being clawed back from the Enron fraud (!). So that mansion could be seized one day from the EA movement. Let's steal money, let's buy private jets and fancy villas for our parents in tax heavens, let's give some to worthy cause (worthy in their own eyes). Despicable people this EA movement. And, no, I'm neither taking lessons nor explanations from what are, in the end, just petty scammers / thieves.
- Animats 8mo agoYC's previous recommendation was to use Silicon Valley Bank. That ended well.
- n2d4 8mo agoWhat's the context here? When, where and for what did they recommend SVB? (FWIW, it did end well, as going with a relatively large federally insured bank meant that no one lost any money during the crash)
- wmf 8mo agoSVB was considered the "standard" bank for all startups for decades so it's not surprising that YC would give the same advice. If you run a startup out of a normal bank sometimes you get weird glitches: https://mitchellh.com/writing/my-startup-banking-story https://mitchellh.com/writing/my-startup-banking-story Of course today startups are probably using Mercury/Ramp/whatever.
- blibble 8mo agoI don't see any weird glitches there chase did what they were asked for years up to the point they were told there had fraud going on, at which point the walls went up which is entirely as to be expected
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- mothballed 8mo agoSVB depositors were mildly interrupted, no doubt, but there's little reason not to exercise extreme moral hazard in banking. OPM will bail you out via FDIC. Theoretically that has a limit but in practice FDIC usually will bail out the full balances even over the nominal limit. If I had an FDIC account I would basically want a bank that invests my money in the most wildly hazardous ways with the most reckless financial controls to give the max returns and flexibility, then let everyone else bail me out if it went south.
- cj 8mo agoThis is intersting. Occasionally in YC founder circles a new founder will raise a bunch of money and then ask something like "What's the best way to invest all the money our company just raised?" The responses are always along the lines of "Your startup is already risky. Don't innovate in areas of your business where the status quo is known to work. Innovate your product + technology, don't be innovative with your company's finances, HR, etc" That advice always stuck with me. It just makes a lot of sense to do things in the most boring way possible, except where it matters (your competitive advantage <-- that's where you innovate, that's where you set yourself apart) Running a startup is distracting enough. Doing things non-standard just adds to the list of distractions that you don't need as a founder.
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- polishdude20 8mo agoThen again, to play devils advocate, doing all the other stuff in a new way might also help your company break out of the cycle that typically impacts startups. It may be that the other things you do apart from your product are what make it successful.
- HaZeust 8mo agoYou've taken VC money at that point. Hate to say it, but doing that means you're voluntarily going into the cycle with no intent to break it.
- dannyw 8mo agoFiguring out a better way to ~~invest~~ speculate with your company's balance sheet is seriously unlikely to improve the trajectory of your company.
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- stackghost 8mo ago
- nailer 8mo ago[flagged]
- Giefo6ah 8mo agoAnd how are you supposed to convert USD to USDC to local currency at par? The exchange fees end up eating any savings you got from not using the normie SWIFT network, and then at tax filing time you have to account for paying / being paid in specie instead of cash.
- nailer 8mo ago- USDC to local currency at par I edited my comment above to provide answer. Swap whatever stable to PyUSD (negligible) and then send to your Solana address in Paypal. You can also hold crypto in US banks pretty soon.
- wmf 8mo agoThis all makes sense... if a YC startup is going to spend the majority of its funding outside the US. I'm having trouble thinking of such a scenario though. I'd expect YC money to be spent on rent, founder salaries, and API calls.
- ghc 8mo ago> Transferring money across regions with the best 'normie' tools (eg Transferwise/wise.com) is multiple orders of magnitude more expensive than $0.0000015 (tranferring USDC or another GENIUS-compliant stablecoin on Solana). I don't see how that's relevant to YC startups. Startups can't legally pay their employees in crypto through transfers, any more than they can write checks out of their bank account or pay their employees in cash. I've paid an overseas employee in BTC before, but we still had to go through a payroll provider and do everything above-board to satisfy IRS requirements.
- splix 8mo agoI'm curious why you can't legally pay in crypto? I heard a few times about companies paying in crypto to their remote workers. In fact I heard that a US company was paying in BTC withing the US, though I'm not sure I trust this particular story. I also see that Deel accepts USDC, and to my understanding they convert to local currency of the remote worker. Is that all illegal? Truly want to understand.
- wmf 8mo agoStablecoins make a lot of sense in countries like Argentina where the national currency is a shitcoin. But YC doesn't fund startups in Argentina. Stablecoins can also be used to pay remote employees but that should probably go through an employer of record so that people aren't paid under the table. This sounds like more crypto for the sake of crypto.
- mothballed 8mo agoOn face I don't see why startups would oppose to paying people under the table unless they just have a dogmatic adherence to the law. Like anything, they are likely to do a cost/risk analysis, which could change wildly depending on the context of the remote employee.
- sigmar 8mo agoArgentina got there with huge tariffs and excessive spending. Good thing the US would never do crazy stuff like that, right? Also the US government is currently debasing USD to increase exports as well as instituting currency controls. There's lots of reasons to be concerned about relying on USD.
- SeanAnderson 8mo agobut stablecoins are usually pegged to the dollar, right?
- stephen_g 8mo agoArgentina has debt in foreign denominated bonds though - the US (and UK, Japan, Canada, Australia, NZ, etc.) don't, only issuing bonds in their own currency, which makes a massive difference. Not to say that Trump isn't wreaking economic havoc and madness, but the USD is resting on a far stronger base than somewhere like Argentina.
- no_wizard 8mo agoI'm no fan of the current US administration, however I have questions about this. What currency controls have been implemented? A cursory search turns up no results, though there is some speculation that capital controls could be coming, they never the less haven't materialized, at least in such a way that no credible news outlet has plainly stated it. The debasing of the USD is again, a fear, and Trump is absolutely stoking the fire around it, but it hasn't actually happened, as far as I can tell. If you have evidence of the contrary to either of these I'm quite curious to see it. I wouldn't put it past this administration in the slightest, but there is a difference between implementing them and talking about them and for correctness sake I want to understand.
- KnuthIsGod 8mo agoSounds like a camouflaged IQ test for the founders... Or perhaps Y Combinator is great at funding startups, but incredibly bad with financial decision making. In which case it is an IQ test for Y Combinator, which they have failed.
- TacticalCoder 8mo agoOne of the biggest YC success story is Coinbase. It has literally got "coin" in its name. It also trades under the ticker "COIN": https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/COIN/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/COIN/ And after a serious beating it's still value at $48 billion. Put it another way: of all the companies YC funded, both those who succeeded and the countless who failed, only two companies, AirBnB and Doordash, are valued more than Coinbase. I don't think YC hates cryptocurrencies as much as the typical commenter on HN.
- j2kun 8mo agoAs with all things cryptocurrency, the goal is to bypass financial regulations and external scrutiny.
- groundzeros2015 8mo agoBy putting it on a realtime auditable database available to the public?
- rglover 8mo ago"Ask for forgiveness, not permission."
- AmbroseBierce 8mo agoA small amount of plausible deniability while they can move to pocket someone in congress and elsewhere to make it fully legal.
- groundzeros2015 8mo ago
- UqWBcuFx6NV4r 8mo agoIndisputable evidence that YC loves smelling its own farts. Pure absurdity. America truly is reaping what it’s sowing.
- JumpCrisscross 8mo agoMight help them win crypto deals. Or expand into shady geographies. Otherwise, I guess having a signal that your founders will donate the interest they’re owed is…something.
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- tombert 8mo agoDespite still not really showing any utility these tech companies want so so so much for cryptocurrency to catch on. It feels like the entirety of cryptocurrency, outside of being a thing people used to buy drugs, has been an example of Chesterton's Fence, with half of Silicon Valley in denial of this fact.
- groundzeros2015 8mo agoI think HN is just getting more old and conservative (lowercase c) and is not interested in new things in this area. We have people in this thread praising KYC.
- prussia 8mo agoThe pendulum has swung a little too far that way, for sure. But when the so-called "cryptocurrency" industry either have business models that are barely concealed ponzis/rugpulls, or run their own "cryptocurrencies" that are only marginally better than a centralised database, it's hard to blame the critics. Satoshi Nakamoto must be rolling in his grave.
- groundzeros2015 8mo agoI agree, but that doesn’t make this comment correct.
- tombert 8mo agoA lot of us were victims of the FTX/Gemini Earn bullshit, where we were taken in by "stablecoins" and promises of safety only to have our stuff stolen. You could say "bad apples" and fair enough, but even with that as a given, I haven't seen any utility out of cryptocurrency as a whole. I'm sure you can find to a nifty little tech demo for something, but I haven't seen any large adoption for cryptocurrency outside of a "greater fool" investment scheme or buying drugs. Stablecoins are kind of a cute idea, but as I learned from the unregistered security scam from Gemini, they're basically just a farce.
- j45 8mo agoExploring the simplest version of this - I wonder if stablecoins are cheaper / easier to financially to transfer that much money. Indirectly it might provide some more public visibility initally anyways.
- j-pb 8mo agoHow about receiving funds in coffee-shop vouchers and ramen?
- vvpan 8mo agoStablecoins work quiet fine as exchange medium for millions of people around the world, including myself, so they are different from vouchers and ramen.
- j-pb 8mo agoThis wasn’t a jab at stablecoins, just a startup joke, but in for a penny: ramen is at least 1:1 backed by noodles, and doesn’t depeg.
- tehjoker 8mo agoI guess this can make sense if the startup is doing crypto, otherwise it seems like financial friction. That said, I believe the entire crypto ecosystem is just a giant scam.
- nemild 8mo agoBeyond crypto teams, we're seeing increasing use cases for more teams to use stablecoins to pay. For example, both Gusto and Deel (YC teams) are using stablecoins to offer worldwide payouts. Here's Gusto's CTO: https://x.com/edawerd/status/2018785968669815011 https://x.com/edawerd/status/2018785968669815011
- tehjoker 8mo agoInteresting. International payments are one of the few use cases that somewhat align with cryptocurrency's underlying value proposition of censorship resistant currency.
- fogzen 8mo ago“Stablecoins is one of the key pillars for us,” Dalal said, referring to one of the areas where Y Combinator would like to see more startup ideas. “So we just want to live and breathe that as well.” I asked ChatGPT for an honest translation: “We’re actively trying to manufacture demand and legitimacy for stablecoins by forcing them into the startup supply chain.”
- kittikitti 8mo agoI would do this and make sure to convert to a privacy coin like Monero the first chance I get. I get audited by the IRS every year, even when I was making minimum wage in college. I hate the regulators and making it as difficult as possible for them would feel like justice. That being said, there are slim chances I would ever be selected as a YC founder. My ideas are more like ChatGPT, nobody would dare invest in them until after it's already released, then all of a sudden chatbot startups get trillions of dollars.
- fud101 8mo agoThe headline writes itself. Y Combinator putting the crypto in the grift just like the famous combinator.
- eli 8mo agoI look forward to them letting you collect your funds in the Metaverse in a few years
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- ddtaylor 8mo agoYC may not expecting USD to be stable on it's own.
- jszymborski 8mo agoI imagine the stablecoins they plan on distributing will be pegged to the USD.
- arbol 8mo agoMaybe they'll do a pot of stable currencies to protect against USD devaluation
- epolanski 8mo agoIsn't the whole point of stable coins to: 1. be pegged to the us dollar? 2. be created against a real usd equivalent? You get 1M in USD. You convert it to 1M USD stable coins. You invest the 1M in USD in t-bills at low yield, but still yield. The receiver of the stable coin can spend it as the "real" usd. The stable coin issuer profits on the t-bill yield.
- vvpan 8mo ago[flagged]
- arbol 8mo agoMarkedly less than a few years ago
- vvpan 8mo agoSo there is a chance the situation is improving you think? I sure hope so.
- aurareturn 8mo agoCookie-cutter "but crypto is a scam" comments are well deserved on HN. Take it as someone who worked in crypto doing on chain analysis. It's 99.999% scams, rug pulls, insider trading, ponzis, pump and dumps, and insiders stealing customer funds. It's a zero sum game because crypto does not increase productivity. Crypto is also one of the best ways to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich.
- thinkingkong 8mo agoFeels like step 1 to providing liqudity further down the toad. Also opening investment to “unqualified” investors. It never made sense that you could buy crypto, buy multiple homes, but sinking 10k into a friends startup was somehow regulated.
- Uehreka 8mo agoSo I get that stablecoins are less volatile than normal crypto, which makes them more acceptable as a currency for funding. But what is it about them that takes them from “acceptable” to “appealing”? Aren’t they basically just “USD but with extra steps”?
- koakuma-chan 8mo agoThey are not "less volatile"—they are tied to the course of the USD. They are easier and cheaper to use than real money, because the real money industry is retarded.
- bandrami 8mo agoThey're easier to accept but significantly harder to use
- epolanski 8mo agoPayments suck only in the US. In Europe we have (often free) instant bank transfers from a lot of time.
- koakuma-chan 8mo agoI know right? And you also don't have to pay for a bank account. My checking account is negative because they keep charging me for having it, but I don't even use it, and I can't close it.
- epolanski 8mo agolegacy banks often have fees. No cost banks are common though.
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- keyle 8mo agoI hope that's not the defacto standard because if you're Australian, cashing out crypto is a taxable item seen as investment payout.
- lxgr 8mo agoThis is the case in the US as well, at least for individuals. One line in a tax form per stablecoin disposition, reporting a gain of $0…
- adrianwaj 8mo agoThis makes so much sense, especially with the rise of crypto Payment Cards, although I like the idea of keeping things crypto-native (eventually!) Next step will be to allow founders to capital raise on the blockchain but do it in a way where they don't dilute control even if they do dilute ownership. That could be achieved by having a large number of token buyers to prevent third-party ownership concentration. But could they merge into a voting block? Surely this has been done before? Is there any way to make newly issued tokens equivalent to conventional equity so no rug-pulls? Are Decentralized Autonomous Organizations currently being used to this effect? Imagine distributing a firm's revenues directly to shareholders in real-time. Everything stays on the blockchain. That's crazy!
- arbol 8mo agoRelated: metamask announced you can invest in shares via their extension yesterday. The tokens are ec20 versions pinned to the shares or something. Managed by a 3rd party though, and only available in the US.
- adrianwaj 8mo agohttps://metamask.io/news/metamask-adds-tokenized-us-stocks-etfs-and-commodities-via-ondo-global https://metamask.io/news/metamask-adds-tokenized-us-stocks-e... Binance moving in a similar direction. I was thinking more in the realm of early-stage private equity. I think Switzerland is in the process of allowing it but there are significant hurdles. https://gemini.google.com/share/b06020007217 https://gemini.google.com/share/b06020007217 (see bottom) A black market may arise for this sort of stuff. People won't want to be locked out of investing due to not being eligible due to lack of High Net-Worth status. Is that even validated on the blockchain? Maybe such investing could be classed as gambling in certain places.
- codethief 8mo ago> Imagine distributing a firm's revenues directly to shareholders in real-time. 1) You surely wouldn't want to distribute the revenue but the profit. 2) You still wouldn't want to distribute the profit in "real-time" (whatever that means exactly). Part of the profit usually gets re-invested or put in a reserve, and so the company leadership must actively make a decision how to use the profits vs. what part to distribute. You can't make those decisions on a continuous "real-time" (say, daily or weekly) basis, though. This needs analysis, planning, etc.
- arbol 8mo agoI think people are maybe missing a key development with stable coins recently. They can be used by AI agents to pay for access to protected API endpoints or websites. The http 402 status endpoint is finally being utilised, years after it's creation. Ycombinator has a lot of AI based startups and they are given unlimited tokens. All crypto/browser automation/bot detection companies are jumping on the bandwagon: https://docs.cdp.coinbase.com/x402/core-concepts/http-402 https://docs.cdp.coinbase.com/x402/core-concepts/http-402 https://docs.browserbase.com/integrations/x402/introduction https://docs.browserbase.com/integrations/x402/introduction https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/Status/402 https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Reference/... https://docs.datadome.co/docs/monetize-policy https://docs.datadome.co/docs/monetize-policy In a world without search engines, LLM chat bots will need to be held to account for the server resources they're using. Seems like a lot of companies are betting on them paying for access or acting as AI shopping agents.
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- utopiah 8mo agoI fail to see the use case where it's useful. I understand how it works and what it might enable but typically I want to cherry pick my API because I trust the source and their pricing (as here we are covering only paid for services). What situations do you imagine where one : - changes frequently and/or covers a LOT of APIs - requires little to no budget oversight - requires little to no quality oversight ?
- arbol 8mo agoTraining data for LLMs immediately springs to mind. They've had a free pass so far but there have been numerous threads on HN talking about server costs ramping up. People are creating zip bombs etc. to combat the LLM companies. Artists are not happy about content being ripped off. If you consider that AI agents may end up autonomously designing, building and running SaaS-like products, or API microservices, it makes sense that they should be able to pay systems in stable coin. It allows them to operate without the restrictions put in place by traditional financial institutions. That's my futurist opinion.
- varjag 8mo agoVC market in America must be spiraling if YC feels necessary to tap into money exfil and laundering circles.
- factorialboy 8mo agoRelevant question: How many YCombinator portfolio companies issue stable coins. Stablecoin-adjacent YC companies: • Bridge (acquired by Stripe for $1.1B) — stablecoin infrastructure, now offers "Open Issuance" platform for others to launch stablecoins • PrimeVault (S2022) — helps enterprises issue & manage digital assets/stablecoins • BlindPay (W2025) — stablecoin API for payments • Coinbase (S2012) — issues USDC (with Circle)
- mindw0rk 8mo agoAverage Ycombinator reader is now having a melt down.
- gverrilla 8mo agoCrime ring.
- iw2rmb 8mo agoI vouch for that. The only reasons investing stable coins are taxes weren’t paid or source of the income somewhere btw drugs and child porn, or both. Good luck with these guys and their attitude.
- duxup 8mo agoThis seems like a distraction for founders / new companies. How many cool innovations does a given start-up really have? Wouldn't they be better off focusing on working on that innovation rather than what I'll call "creative funding" and worrying about crypto?
- igl 8mo agoFounders can choose how to get paid, so this mostly feels like optics and support for YCs stablecoin bets. Most startups will just need to dump this into a bank to pay salaries and vendors.
- nemild 8mo agoAgreed, and I don't think that's a bad thing. To start, think that stablecoins are great for money movement, even if fiat is used on both sides. For example, Bridge (now part of Stripe) started with a stablecoin sandwich, where the stablecoin was just the money movement piece and both source and destination were fiat. That was cheaper and faster than the other ways to move money.
- freejazz 8mo agoScams all the way up. Scams all the way down.
- westurner 8mo agoWhere are some of the Corporate Treasury with stablecoins challenges, opportunities, solutions?
- westurner 8mo agoRe: a similar question: "Small Businesses vs. Corporations: What Tech Tools Are We Missing?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42399253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42399253 : > ERP / Accounting + Finance + Corporate Treasury integration (with ILP Interledger)
- black_13 8mo ago[dead]