I think I've gotten so used to thinking about trade as something that humans do, and because I associate trade so closely with capitalism, I have a hard time pulling back and imagining a world that is not capitalism with various levels of hindrance by governments.

Even communism is just capitalism being suppressed.

Anyhow, I'm sure I'll learn a lot following a long and am very pleased to see you undertaking this (almost to the point where I might buy the book).

Woah! Very cool! I have yet to win my first small business convert.

So...I pissed this guy off.

source

Consistency, man, you're putting me to shame.

My less well-reasoned answer is that it's advertising.

Fake reviewers make the internet go round.

You're right, more data would be nice on this. I need to think a little on how to get at this problem.

People really want dollars?

Strange, because they can have sats. But they seem to want the dollars.

If you watch Ethan's announcement video, he says somewhere toward the end:

"Today, you can take any asset on any chain and bring it directly to USDB on bitcoin"

So maybe this all just a fancy bridge? Maybe that's all stablecoins are anyway: a way to bridge all the ridiculous protocols for value humans have created: dollars, euros, btc, and the alphabet soup of crypto.

Watching the video again, I think I answered my own question: it seems like they will pay you rewards on any USDB balance over 10 USDB on a spark address. Since USDB seems only to be issued on Spark, this means they pay rewards on any USDB balance over 10 USDB.

I suppose the good reason is if you don't feel capable of running a lightning node. For instance, if you are using a custodial lightning wallet to interact with SN, it might make sense to switch to a spark-based wallet like Breez (at least some of Breez's products based on Spark, I believe) -- Spark, being a very large, well funded company, may be less likely to run off with your sats (also, they have a lot more to lose if they try any shenanigans).

Here's another thing:

Brale says they are a "stablecoin as a service" company and that they can issue stablecoins on a whole bunch of different chains.

Who, in the case of USDB, is Brale's customer? To whom are they providing the stablecoin as a service? I don't think Brale intends by the phrase "stablecoin as a service" that the users of the stablecoin are paying them for the service...that's what normal stablecoin companies do (think USDT or USDC).

Stablecoin as a service implies that they are issuing the stablecoin on behalf of someone. The obvious candidate in this case is either Spark or Flashnet. If that's the case, what does it mean that the business on whose behalf the stablecoin is being issued is offering rewards (read: interest) for holding the stablecoin?

USDB is a stablecoin issued on Spark.

It is issued by a company named Brale.

I've been doing a little reading about Brale. Stablecoin as a Service sounds like a fun post topic.

I am very hopeful that this is something SN ends up doing. being able to zap old content to the front page would be so cool!

In my ignorance, I assume that these announcements of Strategy's are marketing announcements.

The fact that Saylor is so darn loud about it "oh man, I'm really gonna buy! You've done it this time, now I'm really, really gonna buy some bitcoin! Big buy coming on Monday, boys!" seems to support this line of thinking.

I don't know what the rules around this are, but when they announce that they've bought bitcoin, couldn't it refer to any time since the last buy was made public?

the mythical barter system!!!

This is not a cross posting problem, but it's related: I often come across links or projects that I think are really interesting and I want to do a write up of them. But then i find that someone already posted a link to the project AND that it barely got any attention (often 0 comments and just a few sats).

My solution has been to refer to the OP in the first few lines of my post, but proceed with posting the dupe. Usually I also forward zaps to the OP. This flow isn't bad, in my mind.

Just being able to add a cross post to a different territory may not be the most useful thing when you could repost it in the desired additional territory with some added context.

Thanks for the info. I saw that Ark was mentioned in it a number of times (and that the dev is an Arkade dev) but I didn't understand how the Ark part works. So this business of "one output" is one Ark VTXO?

Yet another Bitcoin book is on the way.