| Dai seems like a clever idea, but I'm not convinced it will ultimately be necessary. For one thing, the idea that dollars are stable is illusory. And the volatility we see in BTC these days is largely due to the ratio of speculation to storing value in its usage pattern. So if you buy 500 Dai with Bitcoin today, and the price of Bitcoin goes up, you simply have more Dai to spend, and if the price goes down, you have less to spend, but all the while Dai was pegged to USD and the exchange was going on behind the scenes. Two factual quibbles with the article, in case you can offer insight: The example about doing a bet using Ether does not make sense, because chances are the smart contract would collect collateral for the bet at the time it was made, with the idea that upon resolution of the outcome the collateral would be used to pay off the bet. So if I bet 1 ETH on the superbowl outcome, 1 ETH is collected from me and from my counter-party, and then after the game finishes the smart contract awards 2 ETH to the winner. The other issue has to do with commerce. What's the difference between a store marking prices in USD and also accepting payment in BTC vs marking prices in Dai? During checkout, if I'm paying with BTC I'll see how much BTC my purchase will cost. If the price in dollars is more useful to shoppers than the price in BTC, then merchants will denominate in dollars. Dai would seemingly just involve a predefined method of doing the exchange rate math (and fees), but I'm not clear on why this is really a significant advantage. |