Intellectuals should stop advocating that people be treated like children. PayPal and other e-wallets are not required to have bank charters to issue dollar-bac

Intellectuals should stop advocating that people be treated like children. PayPal and other e-wallets are not required to have bank charters to issue dollar-backed digital currency, and neither should stablecoins. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, a well-capitalized player, Walmart, which was expanding its banking activity via its Sam's Club lending, was well positioned to replace the incumbent Wall Street firms as a major lender, but that was forestalled by Congress withholding a bank charter for political reasons: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/business/17bank.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/17/business/17bank.html Gatekeeping a market activity is extremely dangerous because it allows for massive rent seeking through corruption of the gatekeeper. It's inherently concentrates power in the hands of an elite. e.g. this is a bit dated, but gets the point across about the revolving door between regulatory agencies and major market players: https://philebersole.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/venn-diagram-jpg_large.jpeg https://philebersole.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/venn-diagra... Even a non-corrupt gatekeeper can do enormous damage by poorly regimenting the industry. Something that has a systemic impact on a market is a systemic risk to the market. And government intervention is the only phenomena that no market player can opt out of, so it is the only one with a truly systemic impact on the market. Reducing government intervention reduces systemic risk. Right now there is a free market in stablecoins. If you trust the attestations of USDT [1], you can use USDT. If you trust those of USDC [2] more, you can use that instead. People should decide for themselves. And the systemic risk argument for limiting people's choices is absurd. The risk posed by any financial asset is not distributed uniformly across the economy. Its impact on any party is proportional to their direct and indirect exposure to that asset, which is something that they control and have to take responsibility for. In the absence of the government bodies that socialize the losses of irresponsible actors, those actors who take on imprudent risks would see the share of the financial market that they control steadily shrink at the expense of those who do not. The suspension of this market feedback mechanism is what increases the risk of financial crisis. [1] https://tether.to/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/tether_assuranceconsolidated_reserves_report_2021-06-30.pdf https://tether.to/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/tether_assuranc... [2] https://www.centre.io/usdc-transparency https://www.centre.io/usdc-transparency