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If the admins can "lock all transactions", what's the point of it being a crypto?
by andai 8mo ago
If the admins can "lock all transactions", what's the point of it being a crypto?
- colordrops 8mo agoExactly. Stablecoins make zero sense.
- koakuma-chan 8mo agoyou can send them around easily without having to deal with bullshit payment systems
- bigfishrunning 8mo agoUntil it becomes another bullshit payment system
- snypher 8mo agoNo-one in the real world wants to be paid with a $USR. Most everyone wants a cashapp/zelle/PayPal/wire transfer. The bullshit payment systems gained ground on crypto while crypto became more difficult/less usable
- mothballed 8mo agoIf you track the FATFs crushing of bearer bonds, bearer notes, non-KYC/non-AML offshore banking, and Hawala it almost perfectly tracks with the rise of crypto.
- koakuma-chan 8mo agoI don't know what USR is, but I would prefer to be paid in USDT or USC if Wealthsimple supported it as deposit method. When I withdraw, I do Deel -> Wise -> Interac e-Transfer -> Bank -> Interac e-Transfer -> Wealthsimple. This is incredibly stupid and I am forced to buy Canadian dollars. For groceries or electronics, you can buy gift cards using crypto.
- lagniappe 8mo agoPYUSD is run by PayPal afaik.
- kogasa240p 8mo agoMonero is better for that task.
- troad 8mo agoBut you do have to deal with bullshit payment systems. I can't receive stablecoins in my regular bank account, I'd have to set up some crypto nonsense on DankRocketBets or whatever for it to even work. Why would I do this when I can already receive actual USD without any extra ceremony? Stablecoins are a solution in search of a problem.
- koakuma-chan 8mo agoIf your employer does direct deposit of USD into your USD bank account, you don't need stable coins. This is not the case for most people outside of the U.S.
- troad 8mo agoI am outside the US. Many of my assets are in USD and USD-denominated securities. I've never touched a stablecoin. Waiting to hear what "most people outside the US" are supposed to need those stablecoins for.
- mothballed 8mo agoMost people don't realize they're inside a plexiglass shielded financial jail until they try to do something like wiring money for some legal activity in someplace spicy or on the FATF grey list. If you fall into the middle bands of uses, or in the upper class that can just bend or make the rules, then the financial system is well oiled and it looks like the people questioning it are just cranks. It's true that a lot of those in the outer bands are criminals but others are things like "buying a truck to build an orphanage for starving Iraqi children just outside of terrorist territory" or "wanted an investment visa in some corrupt island paradise and as it turns out no bank will open up account for purposes of 'international wires to the Comoros' "
- tptacek 8mo agoThis comment isn't really beating the rap that the primary purpose of stablecoins is to facilitate crime.
- Saline9515 8mo agoStablecoins enable cash-like (instantly redeemable and verifiable) payments for large amounts, for almost free. In EU countries, you can't now buy a car with cash. You have to buy a bearer's check from your bank, which is expensive, requires that both parties have a brick and mortar bank, and doesn't work cross-border. Stablecoins solve this.
- stevage 8mo agoHow do stablecoins fit in here? You can buy a car with crypto but not cash?
- Saline9515 8mo agoMany EU countries have limits on cash payments, and the EU will enforce a union-wide limit of 10,000€ in 2027. Of course, this limit won't be reevaluated over time, so the real value will decrease with inflation.
- stevage 8mo agoI'm just trying to imagine what kind of European vendor is willing to accept crypto for their car. The most obvious reasons seem a bit shady.
- Saline9515 8mo agoThe use case would be for transactions between individuals. A friend working at a large industrial firm told me recently that crypto would solve a problem that they have in Asia: orders are often done during auctions from the producer, and require instant payments; however the payment rails take two weeks to clear a transaction. Crypto would fix this. The fact that it's not widespread doesn't mean that there isn't a usecase.
- Ekaros 8mo agoIt was good while ago, but last time I bought a car I just did bank transfer. SEPA transfers are entirely free. Was kinda amazed that they just handed me keys when I showed them the receipt from my own online bank...
- boringg 8mo agoUnless you are also trying to prop up the us government by buying treasuries (us based stable coins)
- rchaud 8mo agoMost Treasuries are held by US banks, investment firms and municipalities. I'm pretty sure those firms hold a good chunk of global stablecoin volume, given the nonexistent regulation of crypto in the US relative to other countries.
- SubNoize 8mo agoMicro transactions? Giving agents access to money ?
- mememememememo 8mo agoAny token offers this.
- pants2 8mo agoUnbacked stablecoins like USR make no sense - but USDC is one of the few real uses that crypto has.
- mememememememo 8mo agoDecentralized. Stable. Pick one.
- Jommi 8mo agoDecentralized > the transfer of authority, decision-making, or operational functions away from a central authority to smaller, local, or distributed nodes, systems, or entities DAI is decentralized and stable
- Jommi 8mo agoUSR is not unbacked. You have a severe misunderstanding of the whole situation if you say that.
- oersted 8mo agoTo be fair, the article itself says "unbacked" right upfront: > an attacker was able to mint tens of millions of Resolv’s unbacked stablecoins (USR) and extract roughly $23 million in value
- gwd 8mo agoIf I understand the situation properly, the system is only supposed to mint backed stable-coins; the hack resulted in unbacked ones.
- 0x3f 8mo agoI don't know how this specific thing works, but I don't really see any fundamental problem with mixing and matching. If you believe in the benefits of crypto, then 50% crypto is still possibly better than 0%. It's not like I forgo a lock on my front door just because my windows are made of glass.
- mnkyprskbd 8mo agoCurrency isn't a homebrew computer or backyard car project; it is either centralised or not; there is no in between. Blockchain with central authority is the worst of both worlds.
- 0x3f 8mo agoNot really. At a traditional bank I have to trust n people with varying degrees of access. Et ceteris paribus, any reduction in n is an improvement, even if n is not zero. Of course n can be smaller and the specific people less trustworthy, but that's quite a different thing.
- mnkyprskbd 8mo agoAt a traditional bank you have your national deposit insurance scheme; you get that in return for converting your "assets" to the said nations issued currency but accept the authorities control of the money supply and your funds. With decentralised money, you get the safety of a globally distributed attestation backed by cryptography without a single authority controlling the supply of money or your funds. There is no halfway option. You either have a single authority that can exercise control or you do not; number of delegates for exercise of control is almost irrelevant since you can change banks.
- 0x3f 8mo agoI mean you're just making bare assertions, of course there are halfway options. Different components of the account or relationship can have different parameters. Most crypto products are not the equivalent of depositor accounts anyway, they wouldn't be insured necessarily at a traditional bank either.
- anonym29 8mo agoStablecoins aren't cryptocurrencies in any sense of the word. It's just electronic FIAT.
- amarant 8mo agoI mean they use Blockchain, right? Isn't that like the only real requirement for the name crypto? As long as you burn as much electricity as Andorra does in a week just to make a transaction, you're probably a cryptocurrency. And that's their sole benefit it seems.
- anonym29 8mo ago>I mean they use Blockchain, right? Isn't that like the only real requirement for the name crypto? Absolutely not. Cryptocurrently exclusively refers to permissionless, decentralized, cryptographically secured, irreversible, fungible monetary system with a disinflationary or non-inflationary supply, following a voluntary, collectivized governance model. A vast majority of tokens colloquially referred to as "cryptocurrency" couldn't be further from these principles. There are no stablecoins that are cryptocurrency. Ethereum is not cryptocurrency. Any coin issued by a corporation (e.g. Ripple) is not a cryptocurrency.
- YawningAngel 8mo agoIf your definition excludes Ethereum your understanding of the term so differs from everyone else's that we aren't talking about the same thing
- anonym29 8mo agoEthereum is a great utility token. Smart contracts absolutely have utility in the digital economy. It's just not a cryptocurrency, is all. It had a massive premine, there's no supply cap, it's subject to OFAC censorship, and has effectively demonstrated that just ~4.8% of the total ETH supply can vote to cause rollout and widespread adoption of a fork that reverses transactions. We need different words for these fundamentally different things, because conflating them causes real confusion, as this very hack demonstrates. People are surprised that an admin can lock transactions precisely because the word "cryptocurrency" led them to assume properties that don't exist in stablecoins.
- kogasa240p 8mo agoMakes it easier to do pump and dumps, was never about "privacy" or "decentralization" as web3 types parroted 4-5 years ago. Monero is the exception btw.
- hrmtst93837 8mo ago[flagged]