> Crypto-as-money is still young. We have a lot to do. Do you remember Napster? Tether is kinda like Napster – it's taking off, people love it, it's a little sketchy, and it's probably not the design that will last. We don't want to make the equivalent of Kazaa – another blip in the history that ultimately doesn't ultimately work out. The challenge is to build a platform that's as robust as BitTorrent and as great to use as Spotify and Netflix.<p>For something on an about page, this copy draws some extremely frank comparisons.<p>> If users all have to go through a KYC process, this significantly limits the viability of the token to permit free movement of money across borders.<p>KYC processes are, essentially, the law. Governments go out of their way to do this to cut down on financial crime. Regardless of whether you believe these laws are useful or just, I find it difficult to believe they'll have any success trying to work around these laws. Governments (in general) do not like it when folks try to create loopholes: I wouldn't bet on a project whose stated goal was to avoid complying with the law.
When it removes the peg to the dollar, how it's supposed to be stabilized? "bunch of random collateral" isn't quite convincing. How are people going to trust that the collateral, like tokenized bonds, are actually valuable? I'm not going to trust such a system. Money based on trust is dead.<p>The only purpose of this currency is to enrich those who invented it.
The web page for this project refers to Altman as the President of YC, but that's a role he hasn't had for quite some time; how up-to-date is this website?
There are many confusions mixed with stereotypical startup culture in the first video. A global stable currency is not :<p>- Dollarization, that is an already relatively common phenomenon (Zimbabwe, Argentina...) with controversial effects. Definitely not a silver bullet for hyperinflation.<p>- A payment system, that requires to work tightly on UI/UX, on cultural preferences, to adapt to local infrastructure... Exactly the reason M-pesa succeeded where many silicon valley startup failed.<p>And then, there are the technology choices, the stability mechanism, the regulatory aspects ...
Sounds similar to basis. [1] I wonder how they are going to get around the unregistered security problem.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.basis.io/" rel="nofollow">https://www.basis.io/</a>
Guarantee they're breaking some rule for listing Sam and others on their website as "investors". If not, that's super dodgy that Coinbase Ventures allows their portfolio companies to do so.
The idea is very cool. The criticism against existing cryptocurrencies being too volatile is very valid. I can't help but wonder if this just contributes a "15th" stablecoin to the "14" competing stablecoin standards.<p><a href="https://xkcd.com/927/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/927/</a><p>My personal expectation is that the existing frontrunners, Bitcoin and Ethereum, will stabilize in price as the percentage of retail speculators decreases and the percentage of institutional investors + users increase.
I had this rather simple idea the other day: Why not create an artificial index over the last X days and trade that instead? No matter how crazy the price changes of a crypto coin are, the X day average will always be dampened because today's changes will only be 1/X of the change of the average.
I'd rather hold banks, regulators, and governments accountable so that I can safely and sensibly transfer funds rather than having to rely on bullshit nerd Ponzi schemes.
I'm surprised that being associated with Coinbase (of "we're <i>NOT</i> going to agree that black lives matter, so stop asking already" fame) and the giant scam
that is USDT is not regarded yet by these people as reputation damage.