There is so much incentive is to push USD stablecoins on the world, and the demand is insatiable. We should focus on making the bridge to bitcoin as easy as possible because stablecoins are happening no matter how much we dislike them.
And to be honest with myself, I must acknowledge that access to USD has made my bitcoin journey immensely easier. I can't deny someone else the same advantage as long as it's still possible to buy bitcoin with fiat.
imo, it is a form of regulatory arbitrage. It's true that you're getting "US dollars" into the hands of people who want them, but it's mainly because the legal and regulatory frameworks haven't caught up to how to deal with them.
It reminds me a bit of Uber, which also started with some regulatory arbitrage, because they weren't regulated in the same way as traditional taxis.
The difference is that Uber had an underlying core of economic value. Firstly, because traditional taxis were monopolized, but also secondly, the app-based ride-sharing framework allowed non-professional taxi drivers to enter the market on a flexible part-time basis using capital they already owned.
So the question with stablecoins is: what's the underlying core of economic value? I suppose, from a near-term perspective, anything pegged to the dollar is more desirable than many national currencies worldwide. So that's an economic value... but it seems circumstantial rather than having anything to do with the fundamental characteristics of stablecoins. Another issue is this tricky little detail about the peg. Can they really maintain the peg and can they be trusted to?
So the US government has to waste more money monitoring everyone else?
They cant even manage to stay on budget on anything, how much more do we want to balloon our debt?
I think its likely that any regulation will be extremely authoritarian towards using that freeze function. After all even Sen. ComeAndTakeIt went on the confiscation path of "Coming to take it". So yeah... You won't gain much as a bitcoiner from stablecoin adoption except that as soon as (when, not if) they start using the freeze function, the bitcoin narrative will sound more attractive to more people.
Although I wish that my fellow humans would pre empt the drama and realize today that censorship resistance is a benefit, i guess it'll just have to organically grow through fafo.
arbitrage in human historythreat to bitcoin adoption