Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Zanfa 282 days ago
Just to be clear, Tether and Circle also have complete control over their respective stablecoins if they so choose. They have the exact same power to reverse, freeze and block any transaction or balance just as PayPal and Venmo do.
1 comments

Can you elaborate?
The mechanics are sort of different. It’s on a blockchain so a true “reverse” is not possible.

But the smart contracts they write look up a blacklist, which only they control. They can block, unblock or burn tokens.

To “reverse” something they could burn those tokens, and then just issue more and send the new ones to the original address.

So yeah it’s like PayPal or whatever. Except with blockchain thrown in so they can say the rules don’t apply to them.