Earners need stablestuff, hodlers don't \ stacker news ~bitcoin

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232 sats \ 18 comments \ @paul 4 Aug 2022 bitcoin

I admit that I thought tether et al were useless shitcoins until talking to stakworkers. If you earn rent money in bitcoin in Argentina on stak, you pay your rent in pesos.

Pesos are deflating at well over 50% a year, so you wait as long as you can before you buy pesos. If you keep your money in bitcoin, a price drop might mean you end up out on the street.

The question becomes: what is more likely, bitcoin price going down or OK whatever exchange going out of business in the next 20 days? Galoy is trying to solve a real need. Time will tell if it works, but I admire the effort.

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10 sats \ 7 replies \ @TheBTCManual 4 Aug 2022

As someone in the developing world, (South Africa) I would have to disagree on the point of volatility, the South African Rand might not be as bad as the peso, but it's pretty shocking when compared to any G7 nation and obviously trending towards the same thing as Argentina. I've also been to Zimbabwe, so I know what hyperinflation is like, and I work with a lot of these guys

Personally, I don't see the issue with having sats as your denomination especially when sats are close and hovering around cent parity in your local currency, it still makes for a superior unit of account. I think pitching people the "second best" solution does them a disservice and delays the process. We already live in massive vol, its just showing up in consumer prices rather than the unit of account, switching that around and having potential upside is still better IMO.

I am not here to knock anyone's efforts, Galoy wants to be an uncle Jim central bank and offer USD settlement short term thats cool, the market will decide if that's valuable and if their model is feasible for their use case, personally don't think it's scalable but I don't think that's what they're really interested in, hence my reference as an uncle jim solution

0 sats \ 6 replies \ @paul OP 4 Aug 2022

"I don't see the issue with having sats as your denomination " Thinking in sats is great, but doesn't address the issue for earners who have to pay bills. If you earn in sats and the price relative to fiat goes down, you may not be able to pay your bills.

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @TheBTCManual 4 Aug 2022

Agreed I can't speak for everyone and if bitcoin is your only source of income this is an issue, but I mean is that really a major use case, if you're focusing your time and energy to acquire bitcoin just to sell it it's kind of pointless in a sense, you're not reaping much of the benefit.

Like you mentioned people on stakwork for example, theres a cap on how much they can earn and therefore the volatility is capped too. If you're focusing your energy on tasks that give you bad returns, see that as a signal to look at doing tasks that provide a better return even if that's in fiat.

For example, it's more profitable for me to go pick up a bunch of glass bottles here and recycle them then it is to do stakwork tasks.

Even if stakwork is paid in USD, I don't see how it "fixes" the issue of your cash flow.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @paul OP 4 Aug 2022

Once past the qualification jobs, stak taskers get $3-4/hr at 2 hours a day = $180 a month. We've hired around 45 people on stacker news to timestamp podcasts at $10/hr.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bestforyourlife 17 Aug 2022

Sam just gave me the code for Sphinx recently, then Almira contacted me for the required materials for stamping the podcasts. Is that what the flow looks like ? Verify, dont trust 😁

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @paul OP 18 Aug 2022

The code from sam is legit and almira is helping out sam. All good.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @TheBTCManual 4 Aug 2022

That's a pretty decent return, here a lot of people use USDT on tron because it's the cheapest, what are these guys using to swap out to once they get their sats?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @paul OP 4 Aug 2022

The most popular regions are AR, PH and El Salv where there are lots of options to go from sats to local currency. For example, in PH you can go from btc to pesos on coins.ph (owned by a major bank) right on your phone for I think around 2%. Pouch.ph is also available for lower fees.

1 sat \ 2 replies \ @captain_stacks 4 Aug 2022

Stablecoins are important, but I'm not sold on this stablesats idea. By hedging the Bitcoin position, are they not paying counterparties to bet against Bitcoin? Also, it creates a dollar pegged asset without actually holding dollars. Haven't we seen problems with that system before? 🤔

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @paul OP 4 Aug 2022

"dollar pegged asset without actually holding dollars" This is probably the most succinct way to capture the concern. I wanted to point out that for sats earners in a world where bills are paid in fiat, you are going to be exposed to counter party risk. Bitrefill is doing their part with their bill pay program, but you can't force landlords to take it.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @notgeld 4 Aug 2022

Because I closely know this mechanics I'd say no. With perpetual swaps funding rates are around 0 in the long run. Also provider may hedge with spot stables or fiat currency.

Such operators like Galoy may even use direct bank deposit to balance their position.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 4 Aug 2022

HFSP

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @2bithits 4 Aug 2022

Bitcoin is you LONG TERM savings.

Remember that the USD inflation is around 10% this year (likely higher too). So you could use it for short term savings if its keeping better purchasing power than the peso.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @KenyaCoin 4 Aug 2022

As long as there is conversion between stablecoin and bitcoin is ~ instant and ~ cheap (e.g., done on LN and 0.2% or less in fees), I don't really care which payment method is used to pay me -- bitcoin or stablecoin.

There are some countries where the local fiat currency is losing value at a relatively high rate and this in general will cause it to be so that bitcoin can be sold through a P2P trading platform at a premium. The amount of the premium can vary from place-to-place and from one point in time to another but selling bitcoin at a 3% premium is typical by even by taking a sitting offer, and a buyer paying a higher amount (e.g., 5% or 8% even) can oftentimes be found if the offer can sit waiting for a buyer.

So even if bitcoin has high exchange rate risk, if the amount of time holding the bitcoin is measured in hours and not multiple days or longer, receiving payment in bitcoin can be advantageous to receiving payment in stablecoins.

25 sats \ 2 replies \ @paul OP 4 Aug 2022

Agreed that I'd rather receive payment in bitcoin vs a stablecoin. The issue here is, what do you do in between pay day and your rent being due?

If you don't have the savings to cover a drop in the bitcoin price, you may not be able to pay your bills. Stablestuff is a reasonable parking spot for a few weeks. Should people store long term savings in stablestuff? I wouldn't.

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @KenyaCoin 4 Aug 2022

Until we have a circular economy where either bitcoin or a stablecoin can be spent, for most the funds will need to be converted into local fiat. My point was, if I am going to convert to fiat, I might as well take advantage of the premium available when selling on P2P trading platforms. And thus, to do that I'ld want the payment to me to be in bitcoin, otherwise I would need to first convert the stablecoin I receive into bitcoin before being able to sell the bitcoin.

There can also a premium available when selling stablecoins as well, for the same reason as there is a premium when selling bitcoin, but P2P trading platform have either no stablecoins supported (i.e., bitcoin only), or little liquidity and a mismatch between the stablecoin I received and the ones available on the platform I prefer to use.

I'm aware that this "cash out through P2P exchange" is not the typical use case, but I was just trying to make the point that hopefully it is the payment recipient who gets to choose: bitcoin or stablecoin.

25 sats \ 0 replies \ @paul OP 4 Aug 2022

Thanks for providing the info about how you use p2p exchanges.

"hopefully it is the payment recipient who gets to choose: bitcoin or stablecoin." We'll continue to pay in bitcoin at stak, but having a choice to be paid in a stablecoin would be a popular option in some countries.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @KingZing 4 Aug 2022

Stablesats can really help out to sit through volatility, which is incredible since bitcoin has a fixed supply, and therefore build in volatility.

What you earn is wealth, what you want is grow that wealth, money has moved towards a tool to grow more wealth than store of value. Stablesats allows that to happen on Bitcoin while letting the users to split their funds into USD/Bitcoin, big step forward imo.