[shadowgovt]

The key point in the article is that crypto (not BTC, but stablecoins pegged against dollar, euro, and/or yen values) offers a way for people who normally have few ways to access dollars to get their hands on them. It's not about the dollar-using world moving to crypto---it's about the citizens in world that doesn't use a currency strong enough to print their way out of a market implosion moving to the dollar via crypto.

[tw04]

But they aren't getting their hands on dollars, they're getting their hands on crypto claiming to be tied to the dollar. Tether did the same - until they didn't. You can't be tied to the dollar without backing your coin with dollars. You can't possibly back your coin with sufficient dollars without US government approval. You aren't getting approval without following the same regulations as any other bank, which is what made getting dollars difficult in the first place.

Which means the only alternative is attempting to supersede the dollar by pegging to it but not actually being backed by it. Which, again, will never happen.

[PKop]

Exactly. Not sure how one could write this article without mentioning the risks of so-called stable coins. Quite simply, the huge existential risk is that the currency peg isn't maintained, for all sorts of reasons relating to trust, actual $ supply, regulation, centralization, politics, etc.

Simply proclaiming the stability of something doesn't guarantee it, or absolve one of tackling all the same problems of currencies in general. Else, a nation would simply call their own currencies "stable" and back them with $ reserves, which they already try to do.

Also, it is extremely stupid to say that a real-asset backed "crypto" somehow eliminates censorship. The "backing" is the only real item of value in this equation, and getting ones hands on that asset is of course vulnerable to censorship.

[benmdi]

> You can't be tied to the dollar without backing your coin with dollars.

Not exactly. There are projects like Maker and sUSD which create synthetic dollar equivalents via collateralization with native crypto assets. (Caveat here, Maker did recently add USDC, an IOU backed stablecoin, as collateral as an emergency measure. Unclear if that change will be permanent or not).

[shadowgovt]

I agree. It might work, but I think that in the short run, it won't be trusted if there isn't a mechanism to funge those stablecoins into actual, mattress-stuffable USD.