NMR is so 21st century! And such a pain in the ass.
For all the price volatility, all the complication and “gas cost” involved in the round trip from USD to NMR to USD, what do we gain? Only one thing: the ethereum contract to burn some of the NMR. Please excuse my lack of enthusiasm.
It’d be so much simpler and cheaper for all of us, if we could stake by just sending USD to Numerai. And when our models have a bad round: Numerai can keep a few USD (compensating somewhat for trading losses), instead of the performative griefing of burning some NMR ( to noone’s benefit!).
That would just be gambling with Numerai as the house. And illegal. The legality of what we actually do seems like a bit of a gray area to me, but that would definitely be illegal although maybe some sort of cash contest format could possibly be used (and regulated as such). But anyway, the real reason we use NMR has nothing to do with how it works for the users, but simply because it allows them to continue to exist during their hedge fund growth period. If they had to pay out of pocket, we’d either be getting paid very very little or they would have just wrapped up this experiment by now and there would be no tournament at all. So while it is a pain in the ass, an alternative form is not so easy and would have its own problems.
Well, it is key that any NMR we stake or lose is never used or gained by anybody else – we stake it and then we get it back with some extra or we lose it. But still, it does seem like a gray area. If somebody governmental wanted to make trouble, they always can…
My transfers cost in gas is relatively low since I do so at 1:30 am CST Wednesday or sunday, when the US is sleeping and Shanghai time is lunchtime. There are many sites that track the gas cost and will alert you when it hits a certain wei amount. I only do transactions at or below 12. Most the time it is at 3-6. I set my wallet to make the transaction when gas hits that price only. Works well. High traffic higher cost, low traffic lower cost.