Hey all you brilliant fellow trading degenerates, have I got some news for you!
On February 5th 2021 Fabian Schär published an academic paper right on the federal reserves website that is imperative to read. This has to be one of the top academic papers I have read on ETH/DeFi yet hitting on opportunities and weaknesses that are fleshed out remarkably well. I know there is a narrative going around that the Fed and the FOMC are evil - this is wrong. Frankly I feel we are all very blessed they helped keep the entire planet from plunging into a depression at the onset of COVID. Yes it is fun to hate on bankers, but these guys are brilliant and this paper does a great job on breaking down many important concepts that I know from talking to people that are even long ETH, they do not seem to grasp, such as:
DeFi
Blockchain
Smart Contracts
Protocol Layers
Asset Tokenization, ERC-20 Tokens
Market Caps by Blockchain - Highlighting growth opportunities
Collateral (Off/On chain)
StableCoins - US Dollar pegged
The later is the most important and imperative to get a grasp on. I have encountered many brilliant people, whom when I mention stable coins and their utility they accuse me of being a "moon boy", "shrill" and "conspiracy theorist". Guys, I am citing the Federal Reserves own website. This is remarkable as the Fed itself in this paper is giving credibility to USDC & Dai and even offers an explanation of the Dapps Maker Protocol, which as many of you know is my favorite project of all!
"Whenever anyone wants to issue new Dai tokens, they first need to lock enough ETH as underlying collateral in a smart contract provided by the Maker Protocol. Since the USD/ETH exchange rate is not fixed, there is a need for over-collateralization. If the value of the underlying ETH collateral at any point falls below the minimum threshold of 150 percent of the outstanding Dai value, the smart contract will auction off the collateral to cancel the debt in Dai. "
"The most popular ones are USDT and USDC, both USD-backed stablecoins. They are both available as ERC-20 tokens on the Ethereum blockchain. DGX is an ERC-20 based stablecoin backed by gold, and WBTC is a tokenized version of Bitcoin, making Bitcoin available on the Ethereum blockchain. Off-chain collateralized tokens can mitigate exchange rate risk, as the collateral may be equivalent to the tokenized claim (e.g., USD claim, backed by real USD). However, off-chain collateralized tokens introduce counterparty risk and external dependencies. Tokens that use off-chain collateral require regular audits and precautionary measures to ensure that the underlying collateral is available at all times. This process is costly and, in many cases, not entirely transparent for the token holders."
I know many love bitcoin & eth - and I certainly do and have the majority of my network wrapped up invested in them, but the reality if you look at what consumers want in Turkey and other countries plagued with crippling inflation is not access to speculative assets, but rather access to stable coins. And you can clearly see here how the fed is understanding having access to these stable coins gives consumers through the entire planet access to real world assets. Through Synthetic tokens they can have access to real world bonds and shares. From the Fed themselves:
"Although stablecoins serve a vital role in the DeFi ecosystem, it would not do justice to the subject of tokenization to limit the discussion to these assets. There are all kinds of tokens that serve a variety of purposes, including governance tokens for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO), tokens that allow the holder to perform specific actions in a smart contract, tokens that resemble shares or bonds, and even synthetic tokens that can track the price of any real-world asset. "
One can not separate bonds/stocks from defi and cryptocurrency anymore. Markets will be moving into this arena just like GME shares were available to trade in DeFi. Think about just Gold gentleman!!
Years ago I traded GLD & PHYS, along with physical gold. I then eventually saved up enough money to open an account with a brokerage to trade /GC CME gold futures. However, when can we as consumers trade gold and oil? Even with futures we are restricted one hour daily, and we lose access for the entire day on Saturdays. Not so with DeFi. In fact you can trade gold 24/7 365 using PAXG now. You can see the only problem as far as I can tell is that the price just seems to occasionally run up higher for no reason presenting an arbitrage opportunity I have no idea why one of you geniuses have not built a bot yet to arbitrage this yet:
Markets will be moving into this aside from just as the Fed states such as commodities, bonds and stocks. I can imagine real estate taking advantage of smart contracts, and maybe not for the settlement of the home itself, but at the very least to displace escrow accounts.
If you enjoyed this content and my research please give it a like, and a share! And if you think there is something important that community can benefit from, please be sure to share it with us all so we can learn together!
All good and dandy. Are you aware that 18 banks declared themselves guilty of FRAUD in 2008 and only one person went to jail. Are you aware of the number of deaths estimated to have been caused by this acknwledged FRAUD ?
Macroecnomics can be very simple, counting bodies too.
So allow me to disagree with you.
Imperial_Peak
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@nolandlab, finally someone with reason. Banks do one good thing and apparently there the savior of the economy. BLAH.
GnosisLight
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@nolandlab, not to mention that the fed did not stop the economy from collapsing
they just printed lots of money and postponed the problem
inflation is calcualted from the consumer price index,but most of this money did not go to average people
look at the spx divided by M1
i wouldn't called anything tethered to the dollar "stable"
that being said, what is written in that paper is probably true (haven't read it) and a good starting point for someone trying to understand ethereum
i mean i'm long on eth, but not because this paper was given to the fed
ZenMode
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@nolandlab, well where I can agree with you is that fraud is fraud and if caught breaking the law consequences need to be applied. This is regardless if it is a common scammer or an elite banker.
Lord_Raximus
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@nolandlab, you are correct. I can't believe this actually was promoted to the front page. Total subversion at play here.
ZenMode
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@Lord_Raximus, subversion would be if I was undermining the Fed. I am not doing that. But thanks for your comment. I think the reason it was shared is due to sharing an important academic paper with a highly educated and engaged tradingview community. I imagine the Fed's paper will be heavily cited into the future.