{"author":"thesecretceo","children":[{"author":"im3w1l","children":[{"author":"curiousgal","children":[{"author":"lkbm","children":[],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:36:16.000Z","created_at_i":1678548976,"id":35109120,"options":[],"parent_id":35109043,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"The thing that caused this was the news that they have at least $3.3B in reserves. SVB uninsured deposits aren&#x27;t dropping to zero, or anywhere close.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"im3w1l","children":[],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:38:23.000Z","created_at_i":1678549103,"id":35109147,"options":[],"parent_id":35109043,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"The article mentions that only 3.3B out of 40B of reserves were in SVB in the first place. I&#x27;m not too well-read on the SVB situation but some of those 3.3B may additionally be recovered.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:28:33.000Z","created_at_i":1678548513,"id":35109043,"options":[],"parent_id":35108965,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"&gt; reserves<p>So likely 0?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"koolba","children":[{"author":"hd95489","children":[],"created_at":"2023-03-11T16:43:05.000Z","created_at_i":1678552985,"id":35109986,"options":[],"parent_id":35109066,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"Would you take that bet? It\u2019s likely that the exposure is similar in nature for their other assets","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:30:29.000Z","created_at_i":1678548629,"id":35109066,"options":[],"parent_id":35108965,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"Lowering face value is not an option if they intend on being a going concern. Their core business is maintaining something that&#x27;s worth a dollar and they can&#x27;t do that, then the market will move on to other things. It&#x27;ll be permanently an unwinding operation.<p>Their best play right now would be to find some big pocketed investors with on chain assets. Have them buy USDC on-chain for $.90 on the dollar, write off the $1 redemption value with a $.10 bonus, and defer redemption on those tokens until they figure out the liquidity situation. It&#x27;d be a crazy bet and requires on-chain assets to kick start it, but the investors would be making a decent return in exchange for delaying their redemptions.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:22:01.000Z","created_at_i":1678548121,"id":35108965,"options":[],"parent_id":35108711,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"My instinctive thought is that the responsible thing to do here is to pause redemptions for a while to see how the SVB thing plays out and then lower the face value of the usdc to align with their reserves.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"nikanj","children":[{"author":"TekMol","children":[{"author":"anonymoushn","children":[{"author":"TekMol","children":[{"author":"anonymoushn","children":[],"created_at":"2023-03-11T16:55:02.000Z","created_at_i":1678553702,"id":35110137,"options":[],"parent_id":35109793,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"They buy treasuries and collect 4.5% on $40 billion.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2023-03-11T16:29:19.000Z","created_at_i":1678552159,"id":35109793,"options":[],"parent_id":35109163,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"If they buy and sell at $1, how do they finance their operation?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:40:03.000Z","created_at_i":1678549203,"id":35109163,"options":[],"parent_id":35109102,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"Yes, presumably redemptions will remain open come Monday. As far as I know Circle creates and redeems at par, they don&#x27;t charge 100bps or whatever.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"khold_stare","children":[{"author":"TekMol","children":[{"author":"true_religion","children":[],"created_at":"2023-03-11T16:32:26.000Z","created_at_i":1678552346,"id":35109839,"options":[],"parent_id":35109783,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"Transaction fees I think?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"nikanj","children":[],"created_at":"2023-03-11T16:54:25.000Z","created_at_i":1678553665,"id":35110127,"options":[],"parent_id":35109783,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"They invest the USD. If the investments work out, they keep the profits. If they don\u2019t, the customers just got crypto\u2019d","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"humanizersequel","children":[],"created_at":"2023-03-11T18:59:08.000Z","created_at_i":1678561148,"id":35111400,"options":[],"parent_id":35109783,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"Short term treasuries. They&#x27;re a liquidity provider for the US government.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2023-03-11T16:28:59.000Z","created_at_i":1678552139,"id":35109783,"options":[],"parent_id":35109196,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"<p><pre><code>    creator takes 1 USD, and gives back 1 USDC and vice versa\n</code></pre>\nHow do they make money then?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:43:10.000Z","created_at_i":1678549390,"id":35109196,"options":[],"parent_id":35109102,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"That is definitely not how USDC is set up. The creator takes 1 USD, and gives back 1 USDC and vice versa. In this case, some of the USD held at SVB disappeared, so Circle has less money for the USDC -&gt; USD redemptions. There needs to be a 1:1 backing, otherwise a stable coin is just smoke and mirrors.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:33:40.000Z","created_at_i":1678548820,"id":35109102,"options":[],"parent_id":35109008,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"Isn&#x27;t it even their duty to buy it?<p>I don&#x27;t know how USDC is set up. But I thought stablecoins work like this: The creator sells their coins at $1.01, so it will never go beyond $1.01 as it would be cheaper to by from the creator. They buy their coin at $0.99. So it will never go below $0.99 as it would be better to sell to the creator.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"alariccole","children":[{"author":"occamrazor","children":[],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:37:58.000Z","created_at_i":1678549078,"id":35109143,"options":[],"parent_id":35109108,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"That right now they don\u2019t have enough cash to buy them, because the cash is locked in an SVB account.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:34:22.000Z","created_at_i":1678548862,"id":35109108,"options":[],"parent_id":35109008,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"Great point. What could another reason be for not doing so?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"khold_stare","children":[{"author":"dtech","children":[{"author":"shawabawa3","children":[{"author":"itsdrewmiller","children":[],"created_at":"2023-03-11T16:19:11.000Z","created_at_i":1678551551,"id":35109648,"options":[],"parent_id":35109274,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"They should be able to buy 1 USDC with $0.9 of reserve, destroy it, and have $0.1 left over in profit, no?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"dtech","children":[],"created_at":"2023-03-11T16:28:54.000Z","created_at_i":1678552134,"id":35109781,"options":[],"parent_id":35109274,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"I fail to see the difference, note that the title mentions &quot;depegs&quot;. If they buy 1 USDC at $0.9 with their reserves, they can remove the USDC, and keep $0.1 since they&#x27;ll need $1 less reserve. How is this fundamentally different from a peg? This is exactly why nations with pegged currencies keep foreign cash reserves.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:49:58.000Z","created_at_i":1678549798,"id":35109274,"options":[],"parent_id":35109210,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"You are confusing a &quot;peg&quot; with &quot;backed&quot;<p>Circle have $1 which you can redeem each USDC for.<p>They don&#x27;t theoretically have extra cash lying around to buy USDC at discount, and they certainly can&#x27;t use reserves for that (they are needed to serve withdrawals)<p>Hopefully they do have some corporate cash spare to buy up cheap USDC so that what they lose to SVB doesn&#x27;t make them insolvent","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"vgatherps","children":[],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:50:52.000Z","created_at_i":1678549852,"id":35109290,"options":[],"parent_id":35109210,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"Backed only implies that the stablecoin creator can redeem 1-1. It doesn&#x27;t imply anything about whether the creator takes actions on the open market to try and manipulate the price to be at par.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:44:38.000Z","created_at_i":1678549478,"id":35109210,"options":[],"parent_id":35109128,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"That&#x27;s the whole point of a peg. If your thing goes below the pegged value, use your other assets to buy until your thing reaches pegged value (and vice versa). That&#x27;s what &quot;backed&quot; means.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:36:46.000Z","created_at_i":1678549006,"id":35109128,"options":[],"parent_id":35109008,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"This makes no sense. Circle&#x27;s holdings are backing USDC. They can&#x27;t use the money backing other USDC to buy more USDC. That&#x27;s just market manipulation.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:24:48.000Z","created_at_i":1678548288,"id":35109008,"options":[],"parent_id":35108711,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"If Circle is healthy they can make tons of money buying USDC at a discount.<p>The fact they\u2019re not doing it should tell you how solvent they are. Buying their own coin is a guaranteed 10% instant profit, why are they not moving?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"vgatherps","children":[],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:48:53.000Z","created_at_i":1678549733,"id":35109263,"options":[],"parent_id":35108711,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"You can do a little bit of math on recovery scenarios for USDC and they imply much better prices than 90 cents. Don&#x27;t think this means it&#x27;s a good trade to go buy at 90 cents though.<p>If Circle opens up redemptions on Monday there will almost certainly be a run. There&#x27;s no reason to think that after the dust settles, you&#x27;ll have something worth more than 90 cents.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"fancyfredbot","children":[],"created_at":"2023-03-11T15:48:57.000Z","created_at_i":1678549737,"id":35109265,"options":[],"parent_id":35108711,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"Circle will either all of their money back from SVB (most likely) or a large proportion of it back. There&#x27;s almost no chance that they get nothing back. The current price seems to assume the money is gone forever. Seems odd to me.","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null},{"author":"hd95489","children":[{"author":"curiousgal","children":[{"author":"hd95489","children":[],"created_at":"2023-03-12T15:11:16.000Z","created_at_i":1678633876,"id":35120942,"options":[],"parent_id":35113020,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"Yields yeah","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2023-03-11T21:39:15.000Z","created_at_i":1678570755,"id":35113020,"options":[],"parent_id":35109952,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"You mean rock bottom <i>yields</i>, right?","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2023-03-11T16:40:27.000Z","created_at_i":1678552827,"id":35109952,"options":[],"parent_id":35108711,"points":null,"story_id":35108711,"text":"I would bet that most stable coins have exactly the same kind of exposure that SVB had. Overexposure to long term bonds bought at rock bottom prices","title":null,"type":"comment","url":null}],"created_at":"2023-03-11T14:55:16.000Z","created_at_i":1678546516,"id":35108711,"options":[],"parent_id":null,"points":52,"story_id":35108711,"text":null,"title":"USDC depegs as Circle confirms $3.3B stuck with Silicon Valley Bank","type":"story","url":"https://cointelegraph.com/news/usdc-depegs-as-circle-confirms-3-3b-stuck-with-silicon-valley-bank"}
