As evidenced by the comments on this post, HN understanding of crypto is typically ten years out of date, so I'm going to post this top level:
- Transferring money across regions with the best 'normie' tools (eg Transferwise/wise.com) is multiple orders of magnitude more expensive than $0.0000015 (tranferring USDC or another GENIUS-compliant stablecoin on Solana).
- You can easily put stablecoins in a Lulo savings account and get 5% interest instead of 0.1% or whatever your bank provides. Yes Lulo has insurance.
- The Genius act regulates stablecoin provision. US-issued stablecoins are backed by government bonds with proof of reserves. USDC and PyUSD are compliant already, USAT exists because USDT isn't compliant.
- There's no offramp fees for PyUSD, and you, random American, have a Solana address in the 'crypto' tab of your Paypal app. 1234.56 in PyUSD means you get 1234.56 in Chase or Wells Fargo or whatever. In future your bank will hold these assets directly without need to off-ramp at all.
If you want to throw your investors money away to outdated percentage point cross border payments systems you're welcome to.
> Transferring money across regions with the best 'normie' tools (eg Transferwise/wise.com) is multiple orders of magnitude more expensive than $0.0000015 (tranferring USDC or another GENIUS-compliant stablecoin on Solana).
I don't see how that's relevant to YC startups. Startups can't legally pay their employees in crypto through transfers, any more than they can write checks out of their bank account or pay their employees in cash. I've paid an overseas employee in BTC before, but we still had to go through a payroll provider and do everything above-board to satisfy IRS requirements.
I'm curious why you can't legally pay in crypto? I heard a few times about companies paying in crypto to their remote workers. In fact I heard that a US company was paying in BTC withing the US, though I'm not sure I trust this particular story. I also see that Deel accepts USDC, and to my understanding they convert to local currency of the remote worker. Is that all illegal? Truly want to understand.
And how are you supposed to convert USD to USDC to local currency at par? The exchange fees end up eating any savings you got from not using the normie SWIFT network, and then at tax filing time you have to account for paying / being paid in specie instead of cash.
- USDC to local currency at par
I edited my comment above to provide answer. Swap whatever stable to PyUSD (negligible) and then send to your Solana address in Paypal. You can also hold crypto in US banks pretty soon.
- ACH fees are pretty small, depends on the payroll provider of course, so USD ACH transfer to Wise is pretty much free
- I bet with whatever way I can convert the stable coin to my local currency (EUR), that it will be more expensive than Wise. Certainly Paypal is really expensive (as in SWIFT transfer would be better)
After ACH, which I’m assuming you got for free as you mentioned, US to Poland for 1000 USD on Wise is still 0.46% which is multiple orders of magnitude more expensive.
This all makes sense... if a YC startup is going to spend the majority of its funding outside the US. I'm having trouble thinking of such a scenario though. I'd expect YC money to be spent on rent, founder salaries, and API calls.
I don't know why I'd trust crypto companies with my company's money given the general lack of regulation; outrageous history of massive fraud, scams, security breaches and simply insiders running away with money; short history of these companies; lack of trusted deposit insurance; lack of reversibility; suspicious claims of guaranteed high "risk free" rates of return; and frankly, the general seediness of seemingly everyone involved.
I mean, for goodness sake, "normie"? Come on.
The post you are responding to discusses Stablecoin regulation multiple times.
It mentions it once.
More importantly, not only are those regulations not in effect, the final regulations haven't even been written or approved yet - which brings up certain questions about how a stablecoin could be compliant with them.
And of course, even if a US-based stablecoin is well regulated, it still doesn't make these foreign "savings" account companies offering guaranteed high rates of return is a safe place to park your money.
Everything about it feels scammy. The claim of compliance against non-existent regulations, too good to be true guaranteed high rates of return, companies set up in questionable jurisdictions and the emotional appeals of not being a sucker and fear of missing out? All that's missing is a suggestion that there's a limited time left to act.