[zdkl]

> The vast majority of alt-coins cannot be exchanged against dollars

I mean. You could, like, sell them on a forum or in person. With your wallet which is supposed to enable you to do just that.

I admire the success of crypto-exchanges' marketing in making them out to be the only way to conduct transactions on a friggin transaction management system. But then you'd have to deal with the fact that next to no one wants to organically trade <random myriad of altcoins/tokens>. I for one rejoice about the upcoming altcoin extinction event.

[redox99]

What you are saying is kind of orthogonal. Nowadays you can and people do indeed sell crypto in person, and using your wallet. But you use a stablecoin because it's much more convenient since its stable. Then with such stablecoin you have purchased, you swap it for your desired altcoin either on a centralized exchange or decentralized exchange.

I don't agree with the other comment that the USDT/Altcoin pair is such a big deal. If USDT became even less desired, other stablecoins pair would appear and surpass USDT pairs in volume.

[zdkl]

> But you use a stablecoin because it's much more convenient since its stable.

I don't know how to say this without sounding snide but I am genuinely curious: you need to back every single part of that sentence up with some serious citations.

Specifically can you challenge my perception that you're advocating for option B of the following: Option A: find someone to trade <thing you have> for <thing you want>, haggle, transact. Option B: trust some tentacled bio-monstrosity to perform sophisticated transaction chains with a ton of misaligned incentives at each layer.

[redox99]

> I don't know how to say this without sounding snide but I am genuinely curious: you need to back every single part of that sentence up with some serious citations.

You can check binance and other sites that offer P2P listings and you'll find that most of the listings nowadays trade stablecoins. I can't easily cite that for F2F (face to face) but I have done F2F trades many times and it's always with stablecoins

> Specifically can you challenge my perception that you're advocating for option B of the following: Option A: find someone to trade <thing you have> for <thing you want>, haggle, transact. Option B: trust some tentacled bio-monstrosity to perform sophisticated transaction chains with a ton of misaligned incentives at each layer.

Option A isn't viable. That's basically barter economy, and the same reasons why people use money instead of barter in the real world apply. You have a thousand+ of different coins/tokens/etc. So that's 1000^2 pairs if you wanted a pair for each combination. Obviously impossible.

So before stablecoins existed, BTC was the crypto that everything had a pair with. You would buy BTC and then trade that to something else. But with stablecoins most people moved to that because you don't have the volatility that BTC has.

> Option B: trust some tentacled bio-monstrosity to perform sophisticated transaction chains with a ton of misaligned incentives at each layer.

I don't know what you mean exactly by that loaded statement. But CeX are extremely simple in the way they operate. Of course the problem is if they are doing something not legit. DeX such as uniswap are a bit more complex but not that complex really.

To put things into perspective, what do people do? A) Buy AAPL through NASDAQ (with a broker as an intermediary) using dollars B) Trade AAPL for WMT over the counter

Of course A. B would be not only extremely situational, but also impossible unless you are really big investor.

[danaris]

The difference is that cryptocurrencies, in general, are being promoted as currency—something you trade for goods and services—not securities—something you trade for currency.