[ulzeraj]

Tether truthing the eminent doom of tether is all well and good but why aren't we talking more about YCombinator promoting startups that burned their customer's money by sending it to anchor protocol UST ponzinomics while lying that those investments were held in USDC and USD?

https://twitter.com/fatmanterra/status/1527153694218797058

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/stablegains

Or is it bad to talk about such things around here?

[robbiep]

Definitely looks pretty bad - but on the other hand, an accelerator not making any bets in crypto is not a sensible accelerator. You need to make bets everywhere and hopefully some stick. The other side of that is some don’t stick, and some go proper pear shaped. Make enough bets, it has to happen.

I’ve got no idea what their original pitch is, I certainly wouldn’t back a crypto startup that ostensibly aims to do something like what it looks like they tried to do, but if I was making 300 bets a couple times a year I’d be silly not to do something in the space.

Whether a ycombinator seal of approval lead to investment which lead to consumers getting fleeced and culpability in that situation, I don’t know. It’s crypto. If you’re silly enough to think it’s a safe investment, you’re blind. A company can also say a lot of things differently from first pitch to accepting millions from consumers. As an investor with 10%ish equity, you’ve got some sway, but you don’t have much sway. And who is to say their bet isn’t the right one.

A stain, but I don’t know about righteous indignation, I don’t know how much culpability transfers back to yc… but I don’t feel it’s a whole lot

[blitzar]

> not making any bets in crypto is not a sensible accelerator. You need to make bets everywhere and hopefully some stick.

Thats not how it works; VC's are allowed to pass on anything they want, and it turns out they dont cut a fat cheque to every idiot who knocks on the door.

[ulzeraj]

The problem here is not a bet on crypto but a company that basically went "oh hey sorry too bad the USD displayed on your account is actually UST. K thx bye".

[IMTDb]

> Definitely looks pretty bad - but on the other hand, an accelerator not making any bets in crypto is not a sensible accelerator.

That's why we have the concept of "due diligence". YC is absolutely allowed to make bets in the crypto world; but they have a brand name and a reputation of serious investors. I know that when I see the YC logo on a new product I discover, it serves as a signal. And having a fraud company being allowed to use the YC brand on their website, because YC wanted to work with them and gave them money to allow them to grow (meaning: "cheat on more people") is definitely a stain on their track record

[CPLX]

If you’re financially backing and providing direct hands on strategic guidance to an active and blatant scheme to commit securities fraud then you are doing something you should not be doing.

The previous sentence isn’t and shouldn’t be particularly controversial.

[d3nj4l]

It was one of the most upvoted threads just yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31431224

[ulzeraj]

That's not the link under the Latest news section on https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/stablegains

[haasted]

There was significant and critical discussion about that yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31431224

[tluyben2]

> Or is it bad to talk about such things around here?

Don't think if there is good reasoning and no name calling etc.

I would love to hear the explanation how these companies even got into YC from the people who picked them. Is this some type of divide between purely making money at YC (which can be dirty, immoral, bordering on criminal etc) and the tech community of HN who are generally against that sort of thing?

I mean it's not only crypto; it's dark patterns, privacy invasion etc; HN is generally against that, but probably many YC companies would be dead without them.

So is that the reason? YC!=HN?

[eloff]

It's obvious YC would make some crypto bets. The same way Ark invest is doing on the public markets, YC will do at the seed stage to ensure they have exposure to a market segment that might turn into a big thing (I'm skeptical, but it's not impossible and I don't have a crystal ball.)

What I'm curious about is the initial pitch. Did YC have a way to know that company was a terrible (potentially fraudulent) idea, or did the founders mask it sufficiently that it would have been difficult to tell?

[gitfan86]

Either they are incompetent to realize that crypto is 99% a scam and should be avoided or they knew it was a scam but still thought they could make some money before it all fell apart (Coinbase investors)

[gsibble]

YC has never invested particularly morally knowing many of their founders and companies. I wouldn't say it's their strong suit.

[imustbeevil]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31431224

Are you aware of the search feature? Or are you wondering why people aren't talking about something tangential in this thread specifically?

People talk about YC companies all the time. There is no weighting, no one flagging posts about YC companies. Most people here aren't part of YC, we have no reason to give them any more leeway than anyone else. The main reason no one in a random cryptocurrency thread is talking about one random cryptocurrency company is because that company is not a significant part of the industry, and no one except the people getting Goxxed even know it exists.

[nikanj]

Didn’t we have a absolutely massive thread about this just earlier this week? How much more can we talk about it? Is it the only thing we should be talking about?