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littlecranky67 • today at 8:46 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

Stablecoins are centralized and of course rely on trust - you need someone to exchange whatever asset they promise to guard for your tokens. I find them fascinating (in conjunction with the lighnint/taproot assets over bitcoin) and not necessarily unsafe.

In the freebanking era that the US had (before the FED was founded) every bank emmitet their own dollar. And, of course, there were banks over-issuing and bank runs left people without their assets. But that was before we had free flow of information and the internet. In todays world you can monitor and trade stablecoins, market cap, exchange rates in a freebanking system in sub-seconds. Any erosion in trust will immediately result in price fluctuations. We need a digital freebanking era, and it is a shame the genius act fell through. Exporting the dollar to people without access to banking would benefit the US (but I get that it currently mostly benefits trumps family).


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Dagonfly • today at 11:12 AM

I would not consider USDT to be an example for transparency or free flow of information. The selling point of USDT is that it's pegged to the US doller. Users put at lot of trust in both that 1:1 ratio and therefore indirectly in the US FED.

But: Are you sure that Tether is actually backed by USD? It certainly isn't free information.

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