Price of algorithmic stablecoin UST drops 2% below dollar peg | Dark Hacker News

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Price of algorithmic stablecoin UST drops 2% below dollar peg(theblockcrypto.com)

11 points by tobltobs 4 years ago | 12 comments

Price of algorithmic stablecoin UST drops 2% below dollar peg | Dark Hacker News

chizhik-pyzhik 4 years ago |

Such is the risk of algorithmic stablecoins. The only ones that seem to work well have actual full collateral backing them (either some cryptocurrency, or actual dollars in a bank.)

Traster 4 years ago | |

I don't understand how you can use cryptocurrency as backing for a stable coin. Just as a matter of definition, if your stable coin is meant to be worth $1USD then your backing fluctuates with the price of the crypto that backs your stable coin. And to make matters worse, when BTC drops in value that's likely because there's a net outflow from BTC back into fiat, which is going to occur at the exact time that people want to redeem their USDT for their actual USD. So at the time that you're most in need of liquid collateral, you're least well collateralized. The only way I see this working is if you're not net long crypto, which I guess is possible but gives you heaps of market risk.

linschn 4 years ago | | |

See for example : https://docs.synthetix.io/synopsis

Basically you mint only a fraction of your collateral (typically 15%), so even a huge downturn of the price won't leave anybody hanging, and you provide a set of incentives for the owners of the collateral to adjust their staking depending on the price you are trying to follow.

It's not too complex, and seems to me way better than trusting tether and Co.

omegalulw 4 years ago | | |

How is backing for stablecoins not regulated to kingdom come yet? Seems so asinine?

thebean11 4 years ago | |

DAI has worked pretty well though

chizhik-pyzhik 4 years ago | | |

Yeah, exactly. DAI is fully collateralized. I guess what I mean is non-fully-backed algostables like ust and frax

lgats 4 years ago |

official twitter update from terra https://twitter.com/terra_money/status/1523749536379793408

thebean11 4 years ago | | |

Right but DAI is mostly backed by things that aren't pegged to USD like ETH and wBTC.

Traster 4 years ago | | |

Ok, so fundamentally it's heavily discounting the collateral. I guess that makes it safer, but doesn't that mean you need way more collateral to support it and therefore you're paying a really high cost of capital?

I can support $1Bn of stablecoin if I have $1Bn of USD in reserve, but to support $1Bn of stablecoin in this case I'd need $6.7Bn of BTC in reserve. Sounds expensive surely?

nly 4 years ago | | |

The trick is a technique called "traunching". You take your 1 BTC token and sell the bottom 20% of its market value as a stable coin, and sell top 20% as a derivative with exposure to Bitcoin, leveraged say, 3:1.

If the BTC price collapses the people who bought your leveraged coin get wiped out, and effectively pay off the bottom guys.

This is why leveraged Bitcoin pawn-style loans are all over the place.

Traster 4 years ago | | |

So this relies on finding someone stupid enough to lever up 3x on the most volatile asset around? And not just someone, hundreds of millions of dollars of market cap worth of someones?

nly 4 years ago | | |

Yes. But hey, if you believe crypto is only going to ever goes up, as many crypto believers do, it makes a lot of sense to borrow against your coins rather than selling and facing a capital gains tax charge.

Borrow $90K against $100K worth of Bitcoin. Buy $90K more crypto, borrow $81K agains that, buy $81K worth more crypto. Rinse, repeat. Before you know it, you have 10:1 leverage and all your crypto is held with Nexo, or whatever shadey platform you're using that automates this.

Oh, and all this crypto being bought on leverage of course increases the volatility and pumps the price.