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Posted by shscs911 3 days ago

Y Combinator will let founders receive funds in stablecoins(fortune.com)
158 points | 298 commentspage 2
ddtaylor 3 days ago|
YC may not expecting USD to be stable on it's own.
epolanski 2 days ago||
Isn'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.

jszymborski 2 days ago||
I imagine the stablecoins they plan on distributing will be pegged to the USD.
arbol 2 days ago||
Maybe they'll do a pot of stable currencies to protect against USD devaluation
thinkingkong 3 days ago||
Feels 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.
duxup 2 days ago||
This 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?

Uehreka 2 days ago||
So 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 2 days ago||
They 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.
epolanski 2 days ago|||
Payments suck only in the US. In Europe we have (often free) instant bank transfers from a lot of time.
koakuma-chan 2 days ago||
I 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 2 days ago||
legacy banks often have fees. No cost banks are common though.
bandrami 2 days ago|||
They're easier to accept but significantly harder to use
igl 2 days ago||
Founders 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 2 days ago|
Agreed, 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.

adrianwaj 2 days ago||
This 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!

codethief 2 days 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 2 days ago||
Related: 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 2 days ago||
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 (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.

Animats 3 days ago||
YC's previous recommendation was to use Silicon Valley Bank. That ended well.
mothballed 3 days ago||
SVB 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.

toomuchtodo 3 days ago|||
Go back to the SVB failure threads here and observe the freak out before the decision was made to reimburse deposits above FDIC limits. Sometimes you’re lucky, but luck is not effective risk management.
kasey_junk 2 days ago||||
“in practice FDIC usually will bail out the full balances even over the nominal limit”

That’s not true. It takes the systematic risk exemption and agreement between the fdic/fed reserve board and the president to make that happen. I think it’s happened like 4 times out of the thousands of bank bailouts that have happened.

There are other cases where the acquiring bank took on uninsured funds (like jpmc did for first republic) but in that case your gamble is that the other depositors on the banks balance sheet are desireable to the acquirer. Which presumably isn’t the case for your hypothetical max risk run bank.

morpheuskafka 2 days ago||
But didn't it technically not even apply at the end of the day for SVB? They sold the bank to another bank, which is what usually happens, and that other bank assumed all its deposits and liabilities. The FDIC didn't have to pay out any deposits and thus the limit didn't come into play.
kasey_junk 2 days ago||
No. They got the exemption. The insurance fund was hit both for insured and uninsured deposits. The fdic then issued a special assessment to cover it.

Do all of us paid for bad risk management of the svb customers and the moral hazard is real, just not the default.

Animats 3 days ago|||
> OPM will bail you out via FDIC.

I'm waiting for the demands for a bailout when the next big stablecoin goes bust. Especially if it's Trump's.[1]

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-usd1-stablecoin-hits-5b...

n2d4 3 days ago||
What'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 3 days ago|||
SVB 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

Of course today startups are probably using Mercury/Ramp/whatever.

blibble 3 days ago||
I 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

j45 3 days ago||
Exploring 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.

JumpCrisscross 3 days ago|
Might 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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