1/ Algorithmic stablecoins seem primed to explode this coming year similar to how oracles ( $LINK, $BAND, etc) had a great past year
2/ Stablecoins have achieved product-market fit at a mind-blowing scale - with demand for stables pushing total supply into the tens of billions and still exponentially expanding

They're used as SOVs (Eurodollar 2.0) and MoEs in & outside crypto

3/ The issue with current stablecoins is that they are not truly censorship-resistant. They can be shut down & represent a weak link in our DeFi ecosystems.

What's desperately needed are truly decentralized stablecoins. These can make DeFi applications truly unstoppable
4/ There are a few projects already live on mainnet - notably

@AmpleforthOrg - Rebasing
@BasisCash - Seignorage Shares + Bond
@emptysetdollar - Hybrid Stablecoin/Share + Coupons; V2 = partial collateralization
5/ The key factor with these algorithmic stablecoins is that they need to reach scale ($1-10B+) in order to effectively function as really stable stablecoins and to be liquid enough to be useful on mass scale
6/ That leads to a bit of a conundrum - how do you create enough demand to expand supply if the system hasn't reached threshold stability/liquidity yet?

This is actually the exact same problem Bitcoin faces
7/ The elegant solution? Ponzify it

By entitling the early speculators to greater economic gain, the system is able to bootstrap itself

Those that speculate have an incentive to draw in more speculators. And the more that are drawn in, the more legitimate the systems become
8/ Going from millions to billions to trillions turns Bitcoin from a purely speculative asset to a real store of value and potential global reserve asset

The same is true for algorithmic stablecoins
9/ The stablecoins in these systems when young have little normal demand so by making the holders of the stablecoins the recipients of supply expansion/yield, the projects can harness the power of speculation to create demand

This is otherwise known as the pool2 effect
10/ As the supply for these stablecoins expand, stability & liquidity increases, confidence in the system increases and more conservative speculators are drawn in

This is how $AMPL reached $1B FDV and how $ESD and $BAC probably reach billions

There's too much hot money not to
11/ The verdict is still out on whether these algorithmic stablecoins actually work. $ESD has been holding stability but only a few months young

The amazing thing is that they will gain value whether they work or not

A traders dream, especially ones that understand reflexivity

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More from @Rewkang

5 Dec
1/ Genericized Impermanent Loss Insurance - A new proposed financial primitive for bootstrapping AMM markets
2/ Last year, @synthetix_io pioneered liquidity mining - the model of incentivizing liquidity in markets via paying rewards to LPs in @UniswapProtocol and @CurveFinance

Rewards are streamed through the "mintr contract" which has become a mainstay of liquidity mining programs
3/ Liquidity mining allowed new projects to disintermediate centralized exchanges and market makers and bootstrap their own liquidity - saving significant time & resources for projects with many other positive externalities
Read 11 tweets
4 Dec
There are people out there longing a $60-100 stablecoin lmao Image
Insane volatility

$60 -> $90 = 50% gain in a few hours
The funny thing is that the stablecoin was trading under fair value every time it hit $60
Read 6 tweets
30 Nov
Pretty cool to see a project that originally raised $130M (and never launched) ended up being launched by anon devs with 0 funding with a few months of dev work

Goes to show how excessive some of these fundraises in crypto actually were
That being said, I think it's well accepted that the Basis model doesn't actually work in a real world setting

Cool experiment and I think algorithmic stablecoins will be a pretty hot category this year, but imo there are better ones out there
Also, these capped farm launches are pretty dumb. The intent is to improve distribution, but funds that have inhouse developer resources just end up eating all the cake

So this again the rich just get more of the coins
Read 4 tweets
24 Nov
1/ Empty Set Dollar ($ESD) [@emptysetsquad]

The first such asset to simultaneously serve as a Store of Value (SOV), stablecoin and a speculative asset

An incredibly asymmetric and reflexive opportunity
2/ Stablecoins were the first crypto products that achieved product-market fit at scale after Bitcoin

Stablecoin growth is currently parabolic (USDT alone approaching $20B) and will be the first crypto sector to achieve mass adoption Image
3/ So we're all bullish on stablecoins, but traditionally it's been very difficult to gain exposure to their growth

- Tether (USDT) and Circle (USDC) are private companies whose shares trade extremely thinly OTC
- $MKR is a poor proxy of DAI growth (DAI up, MKR sideways)
Read 22 tweets
15 Nov
Most current token distribution models are deeply broken

Simply rewarding "Proof of Capital" doesn't distribute tokens to the right people and hurts token holders

Just because it worked out OK for @iearnfinance doesn't mean it will work for others
You want tokens distributed to long term network participants and active community members

One approach that gets at this that I like a lot is by combining "Proof of Education" and gamification
@Covalent_HQ does this with their dungeons and dragons data competition

Read 5 tweets
15 Nov
.@thorchain_org is essentially a giga pool2, with every crypto asset in existence

Pool yields sustaining 20-50%+ since September and TVL breaking $50M with only BEP-2 integration live
H/T @DefiLlama for chart
Read 4 tweets

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