YC: Requests for Startups

Great that they are looking at Stablecoins, and by extension blockchain / crypto. The unwarranted hate on HN for this tech is a very interesting mirror on perspectives of economics and finance. The crypto economy advances year after year, as does the tech, but you would never know it perusing HN.

Do you have some ideas for this request? What’s a stablecoin development that’s needed?

With USDC and local fiat-crypto exchanges available in nearly every country, it is now possible to hire a truly global workforce and pay them with a crypto-payment vendor. If some company systematically went country by country, learned the local HR laws, partnered with the most trusted exchange, and then handled all accounting and taxes, a truly global HR and payment system could be built to make onboarding and paying everyone 10x simpler.

Even better is the employees could keep most of their money in USDC and only convert to fiat when they need to pay bills. Now they have a dollar bank account and avoid local inflation.

So, you want a centralised trusted (trusted by whom?) entity to go in, do all that stuff and handle it in a centralised fashion, and work with centralised trusted (by whom?) entities to provide payment to people around the world.

Definitely needs crypto. What a novel idea.

Your general attitude is exactly the know-nothing, anti-crypto sentiment I was advocating against. I really don’t want to get into a debate, the point of my business idea above was to solve a pain point around paying a global work force considering the costs of global wire transfers vs. instant USDC settlement.

Your response is exactly the trouble with all the crypto-proponents.

As soon as their next idea is described in proper terms, they immediately devolve into insults, "you know nothing" and other "oh you're just a blind hater".

> the point of my business idea above was to solve a pain point around paying a global work force considering the costs of global wire transfers

How much do you think it will cost to "systematically go country by country, learned the local HR laws, partner with the most trusted exchange, and then handle all accounting and taxes"?

Even more to the point: what does crypto add in this scenario? Would the company be just as effective doing all that regulatory work, then handling settlement in local currency? (Or just using USD as the “stablecoin”?)

The best business ideas I’ve heard for crypto inevitably don’t need crypto.

Countries want US dollars. They want dollars to use to buy goods, which are usually priced in USD, and for debt interest payments.

Countries sell services (tourism) and goods (products and commodities) to earn dollars. However another major source is by creating their own local currency (i.e. Brazilian Reals), inflating it (5 to 10% common in Brazil), and banning citizens from holding foreign currency (i.e. citizens cannot hold USD). So if you want to pay someone in Brazil from the US, you send them USD, which is then stolen by the government and converted into shittier local currency (Reals).

A better option, as employees I have in Brazil will attest, is you pay them in stablecoins (i.e. USDT or USDC) which they then convert at their own leisure to Reals when they need to pay bills. This allows them to earn interest on the stablecoins and protects them from the shitty local fiat currency.

This theft of wealth from citizens via the local shitty fiat currency is a global phenomena. See Argentina, Lebanon, Venezuela, Turkey, and on and on. This is a major driver of global stablecoin demand, because everyone wants USD, especially retail, but until crypto the ability to receive and store USD was very limited by governments.