Yes, but once I have acquired dollars and wish to send them to you I must involve a third party. Not involving that third party would be the sell here.

I have no position in any cryptocurrency and am not trying to argue that USDC is better than USD. I'm just saying that stablecoins achieve most of the goals of a decentralized currency yet despite this they are not appealing to today's cryptocurrency community.

> once I have acquired dollars and wish to send them to you I must involve a third party

Cash.

(There is no way to send electronic dollars without involving a third party, though more money is laundered using dollars and euros than cryptocurrencies. I'd argue leaving a permanent, public record of transactions is a poor price to pay for decentralized electronic transmission, particularly given the centralized issuer and guarantor problem.)

Ok, here’s a twenty in the palm of my hand...take it...oh wait...

Mail it.

And if you're going to split hairs by saying DHL, USPS, and FedEx are considered third parties, then so are Comcast, Verizon, and other ISPs who provide you the means to transact.

Comcast, Verizon, etc. can't intercept your Bitcoins, but DHL, USPS can intercept your cash.

Which is a problem 99.99% of people don't have.

> There is no way to send electronic dollars without involving a third party

Yeah but that third party is everywhere, available to all (US isn't the only country in the world you know?) and isn't aware you are using his service for sharing cryptocurrencies or simply reading Hacker News.

The current third parties for transferring money, well they all fail one or multiple of theses while cryptocurrencies dosen't.

Cryptocurrencies have an advantage over electronic U.S. dollars in decentralized electronic transmission. I don't think that's a big deal, but the advantage exists.

Stablecoins, on the other hand, have zero advantages over U.S. dollars. Backer goes bust, someone steals the dollars, someone freezes their accounts, et cetera and your currency is worthless. A trusted third party rests at the centre who is less regulated and guaranteed than a bank.

(I'm sceptical that these schemes will pass AML muster. Using a stablecoin over U.S. dollars makes sense if you're (a) incompetent or (b) laundering money.)

With access to an oracle for the USD value, you could make a pretty decent stable coin in Ethereum. You could also create options that trigger on USD-ETH values. This would allow for some hedging against price-moves of ETH without being full-on pegged to the dollar.

The real issue here is getting a USD-ETH oracle.

>once I have acquired dollars and wish to send them to you I must involve a third party.

Isn’t that the same as bitcoin and every other cryptocurrency? You need a cryptowallet (third party); a device (third party); and internet access (third party).

stablecoins achieve many of the original goals of bitcoin, but not any of the most important goals. the important goals are censorship resistance, and fixed monetary policy. Nothing in the crypto space addresses these goals better than Bitcoin.

But they can't be used over the internet without permission.

It could be argued that this requires permission as well since there will be 'know your customer' laws that surround buying and selling them, but to what extent they will require permission might remain to be seen.