Re:The trillion-dollar lawsuit against Tether
by xyzzyz on Monday November 04, 2019 @04:47PM
(#21446870)
stablecoin would be superior for actual commerce
Superior to bitcoin, surely, but no superior to dollars. I have absolutely no difficulty with using my dollars to pay for anything I want.
The biggest reason one might not want to use dollars is to conceal one's identity, and while I admit that there exist valid uses for that, most of the market for anonymous commerce is illegal activity.
Re:The trillion-dollar lawsuit against Tether
by edmundsauto on Monday November 04, 2019 @06:07PM
(#21447673)
A lot of people don't use dollars, and/or find the USD/$local_currency exchange process cumbersome and expensive.
Re:The trillion-dollar lawsuit against Tether
by throwaway2048 on Monday November 04, 2019 @09:13PM
(#21448976)
the exchange process for cryptocoins is far worse in approximately every locale.
Re:The trillion-dollar lawsuit against Tether
by xyzzyz on Monday November 04, 2019 @07:10PM
(#21448219)
Online shopping exists in other countries too, and you don't need dollars to buy things online there.
Re:The trillion-dollar lawsuit against Tether
by edmundsauto on Monday November 04, 2019 @08:54PM
(#21448885)
Very true, but AFAICT it's not as easy in many countries. Shopping across borders is pretty expensive; currency conversions take a chunk.
Re:The trillion-dollar lawsuit against Tether
by dmitriid on Tuesday November 05, 2019 @01:28AM
(#21450169)
Online shopping is instant, and I will have my physical goods within a week or two in most countries around the world, and my digital goods instantly. And there are several layers of fraud protection on top of that.
The currency exchange rate is a minor price to pay for such a convenience.
Meanwhile with <insert literally any cryptocurrency here> it’s just a simple <convoluted 20-step process not even guaranteed to work and with no consumer protection>.
Although Tether's purpose has largely been to avoid regulation, and participate in cryptocurrency speculation, a stablecoin would be superior for actual commerce. Bitcoin has failed for commerce, to some extent because of instability and speculation.
Being able to use something equivalent to cash to transact digitally, with client-side security seems like a desirable technology to me.