63 sats \ 1 reply \ @jimmysong 21 Oct \ parent \ on: Who is your favorite Science Fiction Author? BooksAndArticles
He's probably most famous for his short story Paper Menagerie, which won the Hugo, Nebula and World Science Fiction awards. He's written the 4-book epic Dandelion Dynasty series, has a few short story collections including one in the Star Wars universe, and a few other books, almost all very unique in their approach. He also translated the first and third books of the Three Body Problem trilogy and has a bunch of short films and TV series based on his stories. He's one of the few sci-fi authors that treats Bitcoin properly.
Because they've grown up trusting the dollar. You have to understand that for most people in the world, dollars are the best store of value they've known because their own currency debases faster. But sadly, most don't have access to dollar bank accounts, and if they save at all it's with cash. That doesn't work very well because it's easily stolen or lost, so for them, USDT is an upgrade over cash. They don't know much about Tether the company or the trust they're placing in the many custodians, they just know its value stays the same in dollar terms.
In other words, the gap between what they already trust (dollars) and what they're asked to trust (USDT) is smaller than the gap between what they don't trust (BTC) and what they're asked to trust (BTC again). But the gap between USDT and BTC isn't nearly as big, which is the point of my comment.
If you want to see how stablecoins and BItcoin are perceived on the ground, go to a country like Turkey or Indonesia and talk to the people actually using it. Many of them get into Bitcoin after some good experiences with stablecoins.
I agree with everything you said, but for the billions of people that can't get dollar bank accounts and don't trust Bitcoin yet, something like USDT is not a bad first step.
I've said this in other places, but there's lots of room between impersonal company holding your keys and only holding coins in a cold hardware wallet.
I think that's where the sweet spot is, because instagibbs is more or less correct. People don't trust themselves with self-custody. But that doesn't mean they have to trust Coinbase. They can, for example, trust a techy relative. I know I'm that guy for my extended family because none of them are comfortable with self-custody.
What we need to do is acknowledge this reality and take advantage of it to make more scalable solutions. Something like Fedi for families or communities where there are existing trust relationships would do really well, especially if there was some strict multisig controls over the Bitcoin.