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If you live in Turkey, Venezuela, El Salvador there are pretty obvious and well established usecases. Now Russia is joining the party. I have friends in differ

If you live in Turkey, Venezuela, El Salvador there are pretty obvious and well established usecases. Now Russia is joining the party. I have friends in different countries, it is far easier (and cheaper) to send AVAX than to deal with int'l fiat transfers. So add one more person with actual verified usecases.

landemva 5y ago
I met the author of a bitcoin book who told me he sends both btc and usdc to friends in Egypt. The bitcoin guy sends stablecoin!
- lowkey 5y ago
  I don’t see the irony. Both have their use-case. Bitcoin is scarce, hard money that has a historical tendency to go up in value significantly over time. Stablecoins have practical value as they hold their value over the short term while also having the Bitcoin-like ability to be transmitted across the world at 3am on a Sunday. Just as you wouldn’t hold all your assets in a single equity, there is room in the world for both Bitcoinand stablecoins. I would argue they are actually complimentary. Does that make me a hypocrite?
  - lowkey 5y ago
    To be clear I am not a fan of USDT which has a somewhat shady history and questionable reserves as an asset backed stablecoin with a blacklist of addresses that can be arbitrarily seized just like USD. I am very interested in UST on Terra, an algorithmic stablecoin whose value is controlled by an automated on-chain process of burning or minting a volatile pair asset called Luna. Like Bitcoin it can be transmitted to anyone anywhere at any time. It is also a very fast blockchain where payments can be sent in a few seconds. Like Bitcoin, UST is censorship-resistant, so useful for political activists in less free countries. It also offers very compelling interest rates on savings that approach 20% APY as well as FDIC-like insurance options for ~2.5% that protect against unforseen failures of the USD peg or smart contract hacks. The more I learn about UST the more I see it as a more attractive alternative to the USD for power-to-peer cash, payments or short-term savings. Just as I continue to see Bitcoin as a more attractive store of value today and potential global reserve currency in the future. Terra UST stablecoins are a fantastic technology that solve important problems and they pair incredibly well with Bitcoin to form the base layer of a new monetary system designed to separate money from state. https://www.terra.money/ https://www.terra.money/
- djohnston 5y ago
  The fact they're sending a stable coin over Ethereum lends more credit to blockchain. They've pegged a fiat asset and it's way easier to use, granted on Ethereum gas prices are prohibitively high but that will change soon enough and there are other EVM chains with much cheaper gas and the same end experience.
  - landemva 5y ago
    Yes, solid use case of sending near-fiat to be spent on daily life items. So far ethereum continues to have the focus and attention to adapt and grow. Schelling point effects.
qeternity 5y ago
Hyperinflation obsessed people need to study economic history closer. Deflation is a much worse problem with no good mechanisms to address. Real GDP growth under a deflationary bitcoin dominated economy would be very difficult to achieve.
- djohnston 5y ago
  "Hold onto your Lira! Otherwise things might get bad!"
- landemva 5y ago
  Deflation is natural due to increasing uses of new technology which make products and services cheaper and better. Deflation, purchasing power increase, is good for savers. Those gorged on debt like to "fight deflation" because inflation makes their debts cheaper to pay. The "deflation is bad" cheering squad is talking their book of over-levered speculation.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    People considered deflation bad enough to fight two world wars. After all, deflation makes a lot of people redundant since the wealthy don't want to share. For example, Germany wants to produce every product on the planet and everyone to world in Germany. The idea of letting the Greek work in Greece is an abhorrent idea to most Germans. Germans want to save as an end itself. They sell products and services to Greece without ever buying anything from Greece. This is bound to collapse at some point because the Greece debt that is fueling Germany's ecpnomy is unsustainable. Oh wait it did... and the same story is happening with italy, spain, protugal and even more african countries. All those countries ought to not exist because Germany is running the show right? Who is Germany going tp sell its products once they are gone? Oh right. Nobody. This very same relationship between countries also happens within countries. There are some individuals that are slightly more profitable to hire so they get the whole 40 work week even if they only want to work 25 hours for example. Those 15 hours cannot be worked by a poorer person that actually needs the money. You are now in a paradoxical situation where there is simultaneously too much money and yet not enough to employ everyone. It clearly is an allocative failure. But since the liquidationists see the failure in the existence of properly run businesses, not the fact that they hire and distribute the money to people that don't need it they will simply shut the entire business down. After all, to get rid of the slightly more productive person that is earning more than he intends to spend, you first have to get rid of all the dozens of slightly less productive people first. During a depression, employers will fire those people whose supply and demand actually matches pretty well and ironically they tend to fire those whose supply exceeds their personal demands very late even though that is the origin of any depression. So the liquidationists end up with a very simple conclusion, shut down the business even though it is needed again in a few years, shut it down even though the cost of reopening exceeds the cost of keeping it open. Liquidationism has no proven track record, it has always ended in failure

landemva 5y ago

I met the author of a bitcoin book who told me he sends both btc and usdc to friends in Egypt. The bitcoin guy sends stablecoin!

lowkey 5y ago
I don’t see the irony. Both have their use-case. Bitcoin is scarce, hard money that has a historical tendency to go up in value significantly over time. Stablecoins have practical value as they hold their value over the short term while also having the Bitcoin-like ability to be transmitted across the world at 3am on a Sunday. Just as you wouldn’t hold all your assets in a single equity, there is room in the world for both Bitcoinand stablecoins. I would argue they are actually complimentary. Does that make me a hypocrite?
- lowkey 5y ago
  To be clear I am not a fan of USDT which has a somewhat shady history and questionable reserves as an asset backed stablecoin with a blacklist of addresses that can be arbitrarily seized just like USD. I am very interested in UST on Terra, an algorithmic stablecoin whose value is controlled by an automated on-chain process of burning or minting a volatile pair asset called Luna. Like Bitcoin it can be transmitted to anyone anywhere at any time. It is also a very fast blockchain where payments can be sent in a few seconds. Like Bitcoin, UST is censorship-resistant, so useful for political activists in less free countries. It also offers very compelling interest rates on savings that approach 20% APY as well as FDIC-like insurance options for ~2.5% that protect against unforseen failures of the USD peg or smart contract hacks. The more I learn about UST the more I see it as a more attractive alternative to the USD for power-to-peer cash, payments or short-term savings. Just as I continue to see Bitcoin as a more attractive store of value today and potential global reserve currency in the future. Terra UST stablecoins are a fantastic technology that solve important problems and they pair incredibly well with Bitcoin to form the base layer of a new monetary system designed to separate money from state. https://www.terra.money/ https://www.terra.money/
djohnston 5y ago
The fact they're sending a stable coin over Ethereum lends more credit to blockchain. They've pegged a fiat asset and it's way easier to use, granted on Ethereum gas prices are prohibitively high but that will change soon enough and there are other EVM chains with much cheaper gas and the same end experience.
- landemva 5y ago
  Yes, solid use case of sending near-fiat to be spent on daily life items. So far ethereum continues to have the focus and attention to adapt and grow. Schelling point effects.

qeternity 5y ago

Hyperinflation obsessed people need to study economic history closer. Deflation is a much worse problem with no good mechanisms to address. Real GDP growth under a deflationary bitcoin dominated economy would be very difficult to achieve.

djohnston 5y ago
"Hold onto your Lira! Otherwise things might get bad!"
landemva 5y ago
Deflation is natural due to increasing uses of new technology which make products and services cheaper and better. Deflation, purchasing power increase, is good for savers. Those gorged on debt like to "fight deflation" because inflation makes their debts cheaper to pay. The "deflation is bad" cheering squad is talking their book of over-levered speculation.
- imtringued 5y ago
  People considered deflation bad enough to fight two world wars. After all, deflation makes a lot of people redundant since the wealthy don't want to share. For example, Germany wants to produce every product on the planet and everyone to world in Germany. The idea of letting the Greek work in Greece is an abhorrent idea to most Germans. Germans want to save as an end itself. They sell products and services to Greece without ever buying anything from Greece. This is bound to collapse at some point because the Greece debt that is fueling Germany's ecpnomy is unsustainable. Oh wait it did... and the same story is happening with italy, spain, protugal and even more african countries. All those countries ought to not exist because Germany is running the show right? Who is Germany going tp sell its products once they are gone? Oh right. Nobody. This very same relationship between countries also happens within countries. There are some individuals that are slightly more profitable to hire so they get the whole 40 work week even if they only want to work 25 hours for example. Those 15 hours cannot be worked by a poorer person that actually needs the money. You are now in a paradoxical situation where there is simultaneously too much money and yet not enough to employ everyone. It clearly is an allocative failure. But since the liquidationists see the failure in the existence of properly run businesses, not the fact that they hire and distribute the money to people that don't need it they will simply shut the entire business down. After all, to get rid of the slightly more productive person that is earning more than he intends to spend, you first have to get rid of all the dozens of slightly less productive people first. During a depression, employers will fire those people whose supply and demand actually matches pretty well and ironically they tend to fire those whose supply exceeds their personal demands very late even though that is the origin of any depression. So the liquidationists end up with a very simple conclusion, shut down the business even though it is needed again in a few years, shut it down even though the cost of reopening exceeds the cost of keeping it open. Liquidationism has no proven track record, it has always ended in failure