On multiple occasions Delhi has exceeded 999, which is the maximum reading on the government monitors. I recall being there with 1000+ AQI levels. It's extremely saddening as most have no choice but to endure the toxic air.
I made the transition from fintech to working at the intersection of web3 and climate. There’s an emerging movement around “Regenerative Finance” and it’s quite exciting. There’s very real potential for impact here. A good starting spot to get the pulse on these trends is the “My Climate Journey” podcast.
Shrug whether or not they've missed the boat or are sanguine on the future of crypto and it's all a house-of-cards filled with hucksters doesn't matter. I just don't see why we need to beat this on the head over and over and over and over again, despite no new news. The anti-greenwashing is the one that really gets my blood boiling because of what a large distraction it is to real climate change issues.
This whole thing is just bringing the level of discourse here down, and I've been on HN for a long time.
"missed the boat" somewhat implies that blockchain technology is already being used for anything except the backing for pump-and-dump schemes and the punchline for jokes.
Unless you mean specifically "missed the opportunity to make lots of money", in which case sure, that's absolutely accurate, but if I wanted to gamble I'd just go to a casino.
More and more, I'm hearing only the ETH value rather than dollar denomination. Personally, when I bid (or receive bids) on any of my NFTs, I'm only considering the ETH price.
It's a new shift, but I think quite profound.
Edit: If you're referring to mainstream media, the dollar value is all that most would be able to put into context. For those deep in the space, we're thinking about dollar values less and less. My primary benchmark on overall portfolio value is the value denominated in ETH, not USD.
But ETH is still tied to the dollar and that's where it gets its value, is in the comparison to the dollar. I don't accept ETH for a used car I'm going to sell. I accept dollars, though.
It's not the whole internet, just you or the company that holds your BTC wallet. Just the other day Facebook was down for hours. Imagine had that been Coinbase.
You can denominate ETH in whatever you want, but come April 15th you’d better exchange enough for dollars to meet your dollar denominated tax obligation.
> But ETH is still tied to the dollar and that's where it gets its value,
For people that look at it like that, sure. That's not how everyone looks at it though. I personally look at it with the aim of acquiring as much ETH as possible because I can see that the future economy will be built on it and eventually things will be priced in ETH.
Just because the transitions are slow and you don't see it happening, doesn't mean that there's not a transition happening.
This looks great; it nearly identical to a sheet I developed for my personal use.
The biggest improvement I'd like to make to mine is to implement some approximated form of risk parity[0]. That is, instead of comparing nominal allocations, to compare weighted risk allocations by asset class. This is useful because (for example) equities will contribute significantly more volatility to your portfolio than, say, fixed income, so to the extent you are trying to capture the diversification benefits of allocating across different risk buckets, you may want to scale your exposure according to volatility[1].
There is a modeling challenge here, of course, because asset classes will never be independent risks, but I'd prefer something directionally indicative rather than econometrically optimal.
I would second this - I have no fancy papers or citations etc but eventually risk parity will blow up the world.
There are broadly 2 regimes that dictate volatility and correlation, normal and shit-hitting-the-fan. Risk parity models skew heavily towards the everyday, when prices tick up / down by small amounts, and diversification exists.
On adverse market wide event, there is (generally) no diversification, and leveraged portfolios in particular can face significant losses.
There is no silver bullet, but portfolio wide value at risk, i.e. what the outcome on the day/week/month on any given day in the last 5 years (or more) had I held these exact same positions is as good a measure as any. The distribution of outcomes being something worth understanding and tuning risk to.
That'd be a great addition. I plan to update this with historical charting and tracking of position values over time. I'll see if I can find a way to add risk parity. Makes a lot of sense.
Here is my sheet that is mainly used for rebalancing ETFs according to some simple rules. It is currency agnostic (base currency can be changed) and should work fine for European investors as well.
It automatically pulls MSCI market cap information and determines the allocation based on that.
Then the number of shares that you need to buy or sell is calculated based on the target allocation.
If you use Interactive Brokers, then buy and sell texts for the IBOT are also generated.
Very nice. I need something like this incorporated into my workbook since I mainly use ETFs over mutual funds. Not sure if you know, but Sheets has a function "GOOGLEFINANCE" where you can input a ticker symbol and retrieve a lot of useful info, including price.
EDIT: I commented too soon. You have useful info in some hidden columns. Thanks again for this! I'll be incorporating it into my spreadsheet.
My wife and I paid off our student loan debts with a 0% interest loan and no need to go through a bank. Our position is well over-collateralized and interest generated from other DeFi lending positions will pay off the loan in full.
Not to mention, Ethereum as a settlement layer for stablecoins is gaining exponential adoption. There's a non-insignificant chance it disrupts the traditional banking rails (i.e. ACH, wire, SWIFT, etc.).
I take this comment to mean that you had crypto investments that worked out well for you, and then you took a DeFi loan against them to pay off your student loans?
If so, that doesn't seem that groundbreaking. You could have simply liquidated enough of your gains to pay your student loans off. Instead, you're now in a leveraged position. It's very possible that your collateral could drop below the LTV threshold, causing a liquidation, which would magnify the losses you'd have if you weren't levered. There's no free lunch.
It's certainly interesting that DeFi creates new schemes for creating leverage, with minimal intermediation, but I wouldn't call it groundbreaking. It's an incremental development in financial engineering.
EDIT: read some of your other comments that you made while I was writing mine. It sounds like you're using stablecoins as your collateral, which seems like a smart move, and you've effectively converted your student loan into a DeFi loan at a lower rate. But I'd still be concerned that while your more mundane risks aren't that high (like asset prices and interest rates), you may have exposure to more complex risks.
Why move the goal posts, they weren't speculating on “price go up”, they took a capital efficient loan from an automated world bank instead of dealing with a boutique lender that wastes everyones time
Your edit captures the situation pretty well. I used stablecoins as collateral and this was effectively a migration of the debt on my balance sheet to a lower (even negative) interest rate.
And yes, there are definitely risks; it's not for everyone!
...if you paid it off with an over-collateralized loan, then surely you must have already had enough money to pay it beforehand. Also may I ask what DeFi platform facilitates 0% loans? I thought they all had some low interest
I did have sufficient funds but drawing a loan is more capital efficient. I responded to another comment in this post explaining why.
Also, this was not my scenario but a common view: it can make sense to draw a loan so that you're not liquidating long-term holdings. Imagine I hold $100k in bitcoin and need to pay off $15k in student debt. If I sell my BTC, I'll incur capital gains tax and also have a smaller long-term holding. Alternatively, I can borrow $15k against the BTC, pay no tax, and keep my BTC position in full. There are various ways to then generate interest on the BTC and pay back the borrowed funds.
Some platforms offering 0% loans include Liquity and Alchemix.
I mean given crypto coins are going to the moon, every payment they make will have a higher USD(T) value than before. Deflationary currency is great for lenders!
In fact this “DeFi” thing should have a negative interest rate to compensate for the fact that this borrower will be paying them more and more each payment.
I'm not disputing that it's made some people rich by allowing them to place big bets, but I don't think that's world changing. So did Bernie Madoff if you were lucky enough to get out early.
And I'm not increasing my overall debt position on my personal balance sheet. Rather, I shifted the debt from student loans at ~5.5% to a DeFi protocol where the borrow rate is effectively negative.
Your use-case sounds really interesting. Would you mind elaborating a little bit more? Sounds like you’re using compound.finance or liquity in some way …
I do use both of those protocols, but for this specific use case I'm referring Alchemix. I deposited $30k DAI and borrowed $15k alUSD against the deposit. Traded the alUSD for USDC and withdrew through Coinbase.
I didn't go into detail in the initial post since it sounds a bit crazy, but the loan will actually pay itself off since Alchemix is depositing my $30k into Yearn. The yields generated from Yearn gradually pay down my debt automatically. Other interest bearing positions (apps like Compound and "yield farming" on various new protocols) will also help me pay off the loan faster.
The alternative to this is that I could've taken $15k from the initial $30k and paid off our loans outright. But, using Alchemix is more capital efficient. Student debts are now paid and I also have $30k of capital generating yield instead of only $15k if I had simply paid the loans upfront.
How did you come to trust Alchemix with that much capital? I'm not familiar with them, but just checking their site doesn't give me a lot of confidence about sending tens of thousands of $ to them.
It's all open source. You can see the contracts yourself, or read an audit that someone else created. The beauty is that you don't have to trust them, because you can see exactly what can possibly happen with your money by looking at the code.
My collateral is currently yielding 6.5%, which is gradually paying down the debt. At this rate, estimated maturity is 02/28/2029. This will vary depending on APYs for DAI in the Yearn protocol. But personally, I'll use other income streams to pay it off much sooner.
> When people spend a lot, it gets removed from circulation.
Taking a look at M2 going back to the early 80s, I see no indication of money being removed from circulation. In fact, it appears to be ever skyrocketing higher.
This is not entirely surprising though as the policy is inflation (just enough of course, but never deflation). Inflation is seen as required and desirable, so we should expect the money supply to gradually expand with such a policy, except in cases of economic shock (as in 2020) when it expands more. The problem with such stimulus though is that it becomes very hard to withdraw and asset prices get farther and farther away from any rational valuation based on future returns.
I suspect what is happening is that a handful of high net worth people and companies are accumulating massive hoards of cash at a loss to themselves (relative to gold, real estate...); they do it for the sole purpose of 'doing their bit' to maintain the current economic order; they're avoiding big sudden short term losses by taking on smaller but more long term continuous losses via inflation.
What difference does that make? If the inflation rate is a well controlled 2% that means reducing the supply has not yet become necessary. It's not been necessary, and that's fine, that doesn't mean it won't be necessary in the future, or that the action cannot be taken. I'm explaining the theory.
Sure, while consumer price inflation is hovering around 2%, asset price inflation is running closer to 10-20%.
I account for inflation as it relates to the basket of goods and services most important in my life. Some of those items are everyday goods inflating at 2% annually. But the biggest things that matter to me: higher education, a home/real estate, medical care ... these are all inflating at a much, much higher pace. In this way, "2% annual inflation" completely misses the mark.
"Inflating" is not the same as "going up." You're conflating two things that are unrelated under the guise of the same name and it muddies the water on this already challenging conversation.
Asset price inflation is not inflation, its ROI, and until there's a study, we won't really know why assets are going up. It may be due to increased liquidity, it might be stimulus checks, it might be all sorts of stuff. You're speculating, and if you're going to make a claim like that we're gonna need a citation.
I'm not saying these things don't matter, I'm saying [citation needed] that it's got anything to do with the Fed.
If I'm the only doctor in town and I charge $1000 one day for a surgery and $2000 the next because I feel like it, that's not inflation.
> I account for inflation as it relates to the basket of goods and services most important in my life.
Feel free but the rest of us are talking about a specific meaning of inflation which is not the same as yours, and so should be addressed in a different thread to avoid confusing people.
For the millions of young adults trying to afford a home right now, it is not ROI. For those fortunate enough to have a portfolio of real assets (including a home/real estate), sure.
2. You're not supposed to save dollars you're supposed to invest dollars. You invest them until you have enough stored value to purchase a house - or at least make the down payment. Once you buy SPY, or bonds, or magic beans that live in your computer, inflation no longer matters.
3. Housing prices are on average the same price now as they have been since the 1970s per square foot across the US (inflation adjusted). New houses are now twice as big. Higher housing prices relative to inflation is largely due to building codes, regulation, and councils restricting development in spite of massive demand. One way to solve this is national zoning ordinances like in Japan where housing can be built in every zone. One way to not solve this at all is Bitcoin, because it doesn't change any of the real issues re: zoning and supply/demand.
None of this is new, this is how it's worked forever.
