Or rather… stablecoins, not Bitcoin. I have been a long fan of Stable coins: in 2019, I pointed that they were a UX improvement over the volatile other crypto assets. Today, it looks like stable coins are taking the tech world by storm: Stripe acquired Bridge, Circle has filed for an IPO… and, both of these things from 2018 have happened, and of course, the GENIUS act is touted to bring the needed regulatory framework for these.
There again, just like in the post I published earlier this week, the technology, blockchains which power these stable-coin transactions is blissfuly ignored by the headlines, as if the term blockchain itself was radioactive, and yet, it’s the decentralized nature of that infrastructure which makes these stable-coins possible. Not only Paypal or Western Union “dollars” can arbitrarily be seized by these companies (the “law of the land” is these company’s terms of service) but applications and businesses are limited to what their API offer: you can’t deposit your Ether and receive a Zelle balance like you can use Aave or Morpho and the dollars on your Chase savings account can earn you 0.01% (for a $5 monthly fee… yes you need to deposit $600,000 on that savings to not lose money).
Yet, the same question remains: is it possible to secure a blockchain with less value than the total assets deposited on it? In a world where stable coins transactions replace your Visa, Mastercard and Swift transactions, can the underlying blockchains secure these assets without becoming themselves more valuable?
It’s also interesting that this trend, which seems as strong as the one promoting the dedollarisation, is in fact making the $ stronger… because these stable coins are all pegged to the US dollar. So which one will it be?