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213 sats \ 7 replies \ @SimpleStacker 4 Aug \ on: Britain Missed the First Crypto Wave (Financial Times, George Osborne) econ
True or false? Stablecoins are (at best) just regulatory / interoperability arbitrage. There's nothing fundamentally innovative about them. At worst, they could be scams and frauds.
@Undisciplined @k00b @siggy47 @Scoresby
I have never understood the point of stablecoins and maintain that they are dumb.
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I can see how they get US-dollar-like instruments into the hands of people who otherwise wouldn't have access. But that's still just a form of regulatory arbitrage to me.
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Bitcoin > dollars
So, why do I want dollars?
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I think I will also say true. Credit card networks reach a large portion of the world, but why can't they offer as cheap a service to as wide a population? I assume it's mostly regulation, but it may also possibly be that they are using crappy infrastructure (a credit instrument and banking rails) rather than a wifi connection and a database. In such a case, stablecoin innovation is better payment infrastructure? Regulatory arbitrage seems like the more reasonable answer, though.
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It's probably a combination of regulatory friction leading to bad infrastructure which was built to accommodate those regulations.
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I imagine not too difficult... you just have to put up enough buy/sell orders on the major exchanges at the peg to satisfy daily volume.
Though I suppose it gets harder and harder if the volume is consistently biased in one direction
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