Stablecoins(Except HBD) are Just CBDC’s Rebranded

20231112_000101-01.jpeg

I wonder what Satoshi was thinking when he created Bitcoin. How much attention and vision he infused into Bitcoin, and how much into BTC — cuz these two are not the same. The latter cannot exist without the first unless we’re talking about gambling and nothing more, while Bitcoin as a blockchain is becoming less and less relevant.

It doesn’t do much, honestly. There are probably tons of transactions going on with it daily, but Bitcoin doesn’t solve much shit in the world. IMO, its core purpose has failed. Bitcoin is not disrupting shit. Bitcoiners are no longer the Mad Maxs of the digital world.

Most of the Bitcoin bulls nowadays are speculators and nothing more. All they care about is number go up, and they couldn’t care less if BTC became 2X faster or slower in the next few days. There are quite a few blockchains that outperform Bitcoin in terms of transaction speed.

But blockchain is not just about sending funds left and right — although I personally use that feature a lot. Stablecoins have been under the spotlight lately, especially since the Trump administration started dedicating time and energy to the space. We see news popping up here and there about legislation finally coming into place recognizing stablecoins as currencies...

That’s good and all, but the whole point Satoshi invented Bitcoin was because our current financial system was “full of bugs,” and now we’re cheering stables getting such recognition. Now, I’ve been quite vocal about CBDCs over the past few years, and although most of the big countries of the world have given up plans of going all the way with CBDC development...

Well, we have stablecoins — which are some sort of CBDCs rebranded. CBDCs, as advertised by WEF and other organizations that I am totally against, are more than stablecoins. They are actually programmable money, which is worse, but stablecoins are not what Satoshi had in mind when designing Bitcoin.

While they’re not programmable, stablecoin transactions can be frozen and even reversed — from my knowledge — which sucks a lot... This is good when hacks occur because the ones who issued such coins can freeze stolen funds, but as we’ve seen over the years, rarely do hackers steal stablecoins.

Seeing reports of legislation and recognition coming into place when it comes to stablecoins, I can only think of authorities having more access and control over such tokens... Which sucks. On the other side of the spectrum, we have HBD — Hive’s own algorithmic stablecoin — and HBD does not fit the same pattern as USDT or USDC.

No one can freeze your HBD, reverse any transaction, or sanction you based on such transactions. Moreover, I’m seeing more and more videos from fellow Hivians using HBD as a currency for all sorts of purchases, which is great. The only problem Hive has is poor world recognition and marketing. It has the pedigree to challenge the big boys of the blockchain arena though.

I’m using stablecoins such as USDT quite often, but I wouldn’t put much trust in these. To me, these tokens are — as mentioned in a paragraph above and in the title — just CBDCs rebranded. What do you think?

Thanks for your attention,
Adrian



0
0
0.000
12 comments
avatar

"Interesting perspective! But isn't it a bit of a stretch to equate most stablecoins with CBDCs, especially when many are privately issued and decentralized in function?"

0
0
0.000
avatar

My main concern is towards the likes of USDT, USDC and other similar ones which are not like HBD and others that you are referring to.

0
0
0.000
avatar

It is true that "almost" all stable ones are cbdcs in disguise. I'd just like to add a few points, #hbd isn't the only one that is truly decentralized. Hbd has other problems, for example it is one of the least stable "stables" I know, its balance mechanism is quite inefficient, it also has quite little liquidity in CEXs and DEXs, among other things. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan & holder of hbd, but you can't cover the sun with one finger. The CBDS Stables sucks, but #hbd needs a lot of improvement in order to scale

0
0
0.000
avatar

Does it need to scale, at this "growth rate" of Hive?

0
0
0.000
avatar

I guess that "growth" depends on the metrics we look at. If you ask me, it does need to improve a lot

0
0
0.000
avatar

Improvement will come with adoption imo.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Maybe, or maybe not. It makes perfect sense that it is the other way around

0
0
0.000
avatar

In how far USDC is "programmable"? If I have them in my wallet, nobody can do anything with them.

0
0
0.000
avatar

I didn't say it's programmable. It can be frozen though in certain situations. I was referring to CBDCs(the concept of such money) to be programmable money.

0
0
0.000
avatar

This is the first time I've heard someone claim that a thing that came first is a rebrand of the thing that came second. I can only assume that this type of sentiment arises from the realization that, as I keep saying countless times over the years, CBDCs have never and will never be a thing. With the understanding that CBDCs will never be a threat (just like enterprise blockchain) the pendulum has now swung back to stablecoins.

Stablecoins have a multi-cycle history of survival.
They are more solid than actual banks.
They are not printed out of thin air or built atop of house of cards.
A bank could have 0%-20% reserves while a stablecoin has more like 80%-100%.
Even after all this time not a single major USD-collateralized stable-coin has failed.

https://x.com/i/grok/share/mktZAyI1wJPti15fyIPjrdfbR

Ask AI for a breakdown of failed stablecoins

It's actually shocking that every single one of these is an algo-coin.
Every single USD-collateralized coin continues on or gets gracefully wound down like BUSD.
So I would agree that while stablecoins are trash they are still outperforming expectations.

Properties of a CBDC:

  • They are private; you cannot audit them.
  • History (UTXOs) can be deleted on a whim and no one would even know.
  • They can be printed out of thin air without any regulatory oversight.
  • The rules can change at any time.

None of these mechanics apply to stablecoins.
These stablecoins are issued on decentralized networks that can't have their rules changed by the token issuer.
These networks are auditable, transparent, and traceable.

They don't get printed out of thin air because regulators are constantly up their ass making sure that doesn't happen. And if they did get printed out of thin air we'd know the second a bear market hit (which happens every 4 years) because they would fail immediately from the insane volatility that the banking sector does not have to deal with when dealing on a fractional reserve.

Well this is kind of a ridiculous rant so I'll just wrap it up and say obviously stablecoins are not ideal and it would be really nice if HBD could get more adoption. Apparently I get easily triggered by this topic because I've been making the claim that CBDCs are vaporware threats that do not exist. So seeing someone be like "yeah CBDCs haven't happened yet but here's the thing stablecoins are actually just CBDCs". Like no. Absolutely not.

0
0
0.000