brypto

intersubjective mechanism design @ poidh.xyz - come chill /poidh + follow @poidhbot

real answer?

international txs

using existing rails cross-border is an incredible pain

well yeah but it really only works because of regulatory arbitrage

sending money cross-border could easily be faster in tradfi but they're heavily regulated

there's nothing fundamental about stablecoin USDC/USDT decentralization that makes them better for cross-border other than the fact bureaucracies move slow and haven't regulated them to death yet

Well that is the fundamental thing imo:

“You never change something by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - Buckminster Fuller

Agree that the risk is that the new thing (stables) also gets heavily regulated and captured

But USDC is a wedge to truly decentralized stables

imo the new model that makes the existing model obsolete isn't stablecoins, it's real decentralized crypto (bitcoin/eth/sol/doge)

if we end up in a world where crypto's main use case is stablecoins (even if they are decentralized, which may not even be possible at scale), we've failed

the goal is create a new dominant form of decentralized money, not strap the existing bad money "onchain"

I'm totally aligned with the trojan horse argument

what gets me is the people acting like it's not just a trojan horse and stablecoins are the most important crypto application

I also don't buy the general argument that it's better to onboard people to crypto w/ stablecoins vs doing the hard work and trying to get them to adopt real crypto

one strategy is way easier, but it doesn't teach them the point of decentralization in the first place so all you did was teach someone to use tradfi with extra crypto steps

Stables are a trojan horse

Come for the medium of exchange, stay for the rails

Once you've accepted the new rails as good, you've been pilled enough to start considering non-sovereign money

The latter doesn't happen quickly, and requires more people to leave the dollar mental model, which will take time!