Oddbean new post about login | logout I observe that it's a somewhat unpopular current opinion in maxi circles (and I love maxi circles <3), but I think Taproot Assets are indeed potentially useful for stablecoins. We'll see how it shakes out. A lot of people have ideological beliefs about what "should be", but for people operating every day in developing countries with high inflation, a bitcoin wallet that has BTC and USD, and lets them skip Binance/Tron, could be really useful. There's real market demand for that. Do I want shitcoins on bitcoin? No. But I think they'll burn themselves out anyway. In the meantime as a bridging tool, dollars on bitcoin would meet a real utility demand and benefit bitcoin adoption overall.
Nostr assets are doing the rounds Fiatjaf says tell your children, there are no nostr assets 😄
I see stablecoins as a stepping stone for many people all over the world as we transition to a Bitcoin standard. People have regular bills to pay that need to be paid in fiat. If this takes away from a Shitcoin narrative then I'm all for it. I'm all for Bitcoin being their stepping stone to a better future.
Might as well buy gold
Is there an easy way to shave off a sliver of gold to pay for a bill?
How do people pay bill before stablecoin?
Fiat. Stables are exchanged for fiat.
So just use fiat, you don’t need stablecoin to pay bills. Stablecoin in actuality js worse than shitcoin, zero upside with real probability of getting rugged
But your local currency is fucked or your can't get a bank account, so you put your money into a digital "account" via bitcoin or USD pegged stables.
If you can get a Stablecoin, you can get bitcoin instead 🤷🏻♂️
And then Bitcoin has a bear market and you can't pay your bills. Bitcoin and the world is larger than you and your use cases.
I guess, if you go all in but all Stablecoin pegged to fiat will eventually go to zero. That is a certainty
Stablecoins are for like 3-9 month stable liquid holdings, which can’t be done with highly-inflationary currency, can’t be done with bitcoin yet, and yet most of us arguing about this have access to in developed markets without thinking about it. Stablecoins solve that problem for a lot of people. They aren’t for putting your life savings into.
Savings by definition is additional fund that you don’t need that you can put aside for a long time. Stablecoin is worthless in hyperinflating currency and useless in stable currency. What problems are they solving currently that bitcoin can’t?
The ability to hold purchasing power roughly flat for six months. You don’t make a stablecoin out of hyperinflation currency. You make them out of whatever the most salable currency is- usually the dollar.
The "savings" for an average user in Venezuela, for example, I don't think it exceeds one year. He/she wants to have the dollar to be able to make food purchases generally. In the midst of hyperinflation having a little bit of dollars was one of the few options to be able to "be safe" against a currency that could easily devalue 5% every day 😅 It was crazy. I am not a supporter of centralized "Peg coins" like USDt. But the "Crypto" market in Venezuela is largely dominated by the USDt/bolivar pair. And keep in mind that the Crypto market is a very small niche within the Venezuelan economy. The vast majority prefer to use dollar cash. And the lucky few have a dollar account abroad. Interesting that with a hyperinflation that wiped out most savings and destroyed the country's middle class did not run to take refuge in Bitcoin. The best Money may be in sight but very few of us make the effort to understand it.
You have great points and I get it. Unfortunately, people in third world countries feel saver with usd stables. Eventually they'll understand that #Bitcoin is superior.
Bitcoin is best for long term savings, but that is not the problem that stable coins solve. If you get paid every 2 weeks, but need to buy groceries, for example, more often than that stable coins could be a literal life saver. Imagine: you just got paid and know that you will need to buy food again in a week, because you don't have refrigeration. Bitcoin could be up or down 30% in a week. Your local currency will for sure be down 20% in a week because of hyperinflation. Your government regularly steals the money in dollar denominated bank accounts, if they're even allowed to exist. USD stable coins will probably preserve practically all of your value over such a short time frame. In the long run USD will go to 0 and Bitcoin will be the only money, but you don't care about the long run, you just care about being able to eat next week. This is an important and valuable use case in a small but growing number of countries.
If you don’t have refrigeration, you should buy a fridge first not a Stablecoin 😆
Build a bridge, get everybody across, then burn the bridge.
Potentially useful assets will burn themselves out anyway🤣
Taproot assets especially with LUSD could be world changing in a decade, Im not seeing any Taro stuff yet on any wallets or apps, I was waiting for it, but I guess it will take time to get integrated into the ecosystem. I don’t think we need the shitcoins but they will be made. I’m curious about the mechanism of holding L-USD and how does it hold value. I can only imagine an algorithmic way, or some similar way to Circle in holding TBills. Can you elaborate on it , Thanks Lyn!
So then what’s all this ecash business all about? Does it not fill a need, or is it still dollars for the rest of the world in the medium term?
Ecash makes for private and efficient bitcoin. And you can combine stablecoins with ecash mints. Ecash mints can hold stablecoin taproot assets.
Right on. That makes sense. 🙏
What do you see as the easiest way to play with ecash currently? Cashu?
How does taproot fix or even help proof of reserve risk better than USDT ?
I don't really care what stupid things stupid people do with there Bitcoin. I will not be accepting shitcoins for my goods and services.
Be the on-ramp you want to see. I’ve accepted shitcoins in the past, and simply converted them to BTC when the time was right.
If they have shit, they have some shitty exchange they can swap it on before paying me. The only onramps that matter are dollars -- > Bitcoin Some day I will stop accepting dollars as well.
I've yet to hear any good reason for why stables need to be on Lightning rails specifically though: I mean, if you're trusting i.e. Tether, you may as well transfer your Tether over Binance Pay. It'll be easier and faster to use the centralized service, and you can get rugged by Tether even if you're using Lightning-Tether so you're not really taking that much more risk either way.
So you cannot imagine a monetary system without someone in control of a layer of money? That is how you sound, and also, there is no such thing as a stable coin, nor does Bitcoin need any other layers of currency. Sounds very ignorant of you.
As always the devil's in the detail. But I just want to kick back and enjoy Bitcoin for what it was invented for. As the best savings account in the world. I'm skeptical about what looks like an attempt to segway into unregistered securities land. And also the effects that Bitcoin bloat has on the security model of Bitcoin. Specifically the P2P security model. I'm concerned about wannabe security interlopers like miners and their middlemen. I'm concerned about the underserved and unbanked. I'm just not sure Bitcoin is the vehicle for hand to mouth..🤔
I hear CBDCs are pretty hot. Could look into that. At least then it wouldn't be unregulated counterparty risk with no FDIC insurance.
I don't think people in third world country, getting usd stable illegally care about regulations or FDIC much.
Anything else is an implement of dishing out pain
I see no problem in a free market like Bitcoin. The supply of "Stablecoins". They are a second layer. And with the best quality base asset there can be in cyberspace. As much as many like it, it is something very demanded by third world users. Here in Venezuela "Cash is King". What can you do? It is what it is
What are the opinions of tether on the liquid network? I find it very easy to use on #SideSwap.io (scroll down on liquid.net to find it listed as a featured project). 0.1% for peg-ins & peg-outs from/to the main chain, and ~0.8% to swap in & out of liquid tether. Also can use #boltz.exchange to move between liquid and lightning (hoping this gets built into SideSwap eventually).
Imho not exactly regarding the USDT scandal many years ago. It was not audited because there were not enough proof about every single USD "covered" by USDT. At the end they found the appropiate amount of USD in a bank in the Kayman Island. The main problem with stablecoun that they are issued by a centralized corp/xchange. In case of USDT the Bitfinance, or BUSD it is the Binance. And Binance is not so sympathic to the US authorities, so they want to "overregulate" the Binance in the US.
When it was first announced I thought Taro would fill up the blockchain with shitcoin transactions. Then ordinals happened...lol. Today I am very bullish on TapAss. It shortens the distance between stablecoin users and lightning use, which I believe will bring in many new bitcoiners. It also enables cypherpunk money exchange businesses to operate in a purely online fashion. Looking forward to disintermediating the banks. 🤙
🤢🤮🤮🤮🤮