@meed18 how’re you handling this?
I never moved anything back in. I decided to stay on the sidelines to see if limiting withdrawals became a thing across the industry. It did, so I am not interested anymore. Even though Voyager never limited withdrawals, there’s nothing stopping them from doing it. Everything I had in USDC at Voyager earning 9% is now at SoFi earning 1.25%.
4 Likes
and, just like that
https://investvoyager.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4407560579227-Are-there-withdrawal-limits-
7 Likes
https://coinflex.com/blog/coinflex-update-on-withdrawals/
Due to extreme market conditions last week & continued uncertainty involving a counterparty, today we are announcing that we are pausing all withdrawals. We fully expect to resume withdrawals in a better position as soon as possible.
2 Likes
Celsius looks like they’re going bankrupt.
3 Likes
Act like a bank, but with nearly zero equity buffer for taking bad loan losses ahead of your depositors, and then act surprised when you blow up in a market downturn.
7 Likes
A nice intro to the above WSJ article if you want the highlights
—-
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
Celsius
Here is a financial literacy test for you:
- You can borrow $18 billion at 8% interest.
- You can take that money and invest it in loans that pay 20% interest.
- You don’t have to put up any of your own money.
- So you get $3.6 billion a year in interest (20% of $18 billion), and you pay out $1.4 billion in interest (8% of $18 billion), so you keep about $2.2 billion for yourself.
- Is this good?
This is not a yes-or-no question, and the right answer is probably something like “well, good for who?” If you are a person who invents a business like this, and you are able to do it for a year or two and squirrel away the $2.4 billion, it is very very good for you and you can buy yachts and stuff. But in the long run, if you are borrowing at 8% and lending at 20%, you are taking some huge risk somewhere. Those 20% loans are risky and correlated and illiquid and possibly Ponzi schemes; that 8% money is flighty and unstable; you are lending out all the money you are borrowing and there is no cushion anywhere. At some point the people lending you the money at 8% are all going to ask for it back, and the people borrowing the money at 20% aren’t going to give it back, and you’re not going to have the money to pay back the 8% people, and they’re going to be really mad, and that’s when it will be useful for you to have a yacht to sail away on.
Anyway here’s a Wall Street Journal article about Celsius…
6 Likes
Crypto setting all sorts of records. The ~$2B fraud is from a few years ago, the news is they caught the guy.
- CFTC Charges South African Pool Operator and CEO with $1.7B Fraud Involving Bitcoin
- CFTC: Action Is CFTC’s Largest Fraud Scheme Case Involving Bitcoin
1 Like
In more recent news, BlockFi is worth almost nothing. Time will tell if these guys overpaid by $25M or not.
1 Like
wonder what will be happen to my CC rewards there. $200 in well diversified crypto 
Oh well glad I didn’t buy more.
good article on the 3 Arrow blowup.
Voyager looks like they’re going down too. No withdrawals, spending what they have left on lawyers.
2 Likes
That was quick. There but by the Grace of God go I.
3 Likes
Glad you got out in time. Good advice from Margin Call.
“If you’re first out the door, that’s not called panicking.”
2 Likes
I have a close friend I am afraid is going to lose a bunch. He was in Voyager before I was and he was part of the reason I got in for the few months I did. I’ve been messaging him the past few weeks about getting his money out and telling him that I got mine out and couldn’t stomach it. I messaged him at 2:45 PM today and asked if he was all the way out. He said no. I sent him the link to the press release about closing withdrawals at 2:00 PM (he’s on vacation in Switzerland so I don’t think he had heard yet). I didn’t hear back from him after sending the link. I hope he does okay.
3 Likes
First section of this post covers the 3 Arrow blowup.
1 Like
Housing correction a la 2009?
Voyager is gone too.
Guess we’ll get a decent sample of how bankruptcy law judges treat crypto investors in these types of companies at this rate.
It’s a good thing there weren’t any, like, major professional sports franchises helmed by super-visible billionaires that introduced Voyager to a bunch of unsuspecting noobs who, we have to imagine, were subsequently enticed to get in to crypto on the heels of “an unprecedented $100 CRYPTO REWARD,” right?
https://twitter.com/investvoyager/status/1471220596591710213
2 Likes