223 sats \ 7 replies \ @grayruby 30 Jul \ on: How Tether Helps To Fund The US Government econ
Stablecoins are going to exist. I don't like them either but it's a reality. Personally I would rather see tether thrive than USDC which is one step from a CBDC.
I've never really grasped the appeal of stable coins, but I'm generally an all-in or all-out person.
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Personally if I were to send money globally I would send bitcoin but not everyone wants bitcoin because they can't spend it. My wife sends a donation to this church group in Africa quarterly that helps them buy food and supplies for churches and schools in remote areas. They use some African version of paypal to execute the transactions and it costs a lot. I think 20 dollars in fees for her to send 150 dollars. I wrote to them and suggested they take bitcoin over lightning but they said they were not interested because all of their suppliers only take the local currency or USD. That's a good example where a stablecoin could be super useful. If all the local vendors were able to take tether for instance, my wife could send the charity tether (over lightning soon) and they could pay their suppliers tether and not have to pay ridiculous fees to however many banking middlemen sit in the middle of the money transfer via the tradfi way.
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They still need locals to accept Tether, though. I'm not sure that's a different hurdle than accepting Bitcoin, unless the traditional financial service providers start accepting Tether as though it were dollars.
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You are right. There would still need to be an ecosystem of people accepting it, but I just think there is that added knowledge hurdle with bitcoin that people need to get over where as they already understand a digital representation of a dollar, whether that is onchain or not is meaningless to them.
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Stablecoins bridge the gap between traditional finance and crypto, offering the benefits of digital currencies with reduced volatility. They serve as a safe haven during market turbulence and facilitate easier crypto transactions, appealing to those seeking a middle ground in the volatile crypto space.