Tether and Tether copycats command the lion’s share of stablecoin usage. While it’s true Tether isn’t a speculative store of value — custodial risk of Tether no

Tether and Tether copycats command the lion’s share of stablecoin usage. While it’s true Tether isn’t a speculative store of value — custodial risk of Tether notwithstanding — it’s also an IOU, not a cryptocurrency. Contrary to popular belief, alternative free-floating “stablecoins” aren’t actually stable: every major example of one has imploded at least once in times of high market volatility. This makes them speculative. Unstable “stablecoins” are speculative stores of value no different from any other cryptocurrency, but with a twist: the real world usage to virtue signaling ratio equally rounds down to zero, but the profit mechanism is different. You bet on unstable stablecoins by purchasing cooperative pseudo-equities whose value is propped up by all the drum beating that goes on for the closely linked unstable stablecoin itself. (All the examples of unstable “stablecoins” I’m familiar with have shipped such tertiary pseudo-equity coins as investor bait, which IMO explains virtually all of the buzz they seem to have — again no different from any other cryptocurrency.)