USDC is not permissionless. Coinbase froze all USDC in Tornado on the Ethereum blockchain, for examaple.

That's after the fact. Anyone can use and trade in USDC without being whitelisted.

You can receive payments in USDC and immediately exchange them for other safer tokens if you wish, and if you use a fresh address each time, nobody can stop you.

That doesn't make it permissionless. The parent is right. USDC is closer to an IOU than a permissionless ERC20 token because the contract it uses has been modified for the centralized blacklist functionality and can lock you out any time.

It's the same as a centralized bank. If you get your salary deposited you can also go and take out cash immediately, but until you do, you don't truly own the par value.

I think what people are pointing out is that "permissionless" is a function of the legal environment, not the technology. If you "permissionlessly" send some pseudo-dollars to Iran you're relying on your opsec and lack of enforcement, rather than the permission which you didn't get.

Issued by Circle