This is akin to asking why commodity futures exist. It's an abstraction that provides utility. In the case of commodity futures, it allows commodities to be traded on an exchange where bags of onion seeds would otherwise be difficult to trade. In the case of USDC it allows USD to exist on the blockchain so that it can interact with smart contracts.

Believe it or not, if you want to invest in gold, the only option isn't buying and storing physical gold in your home. That might even be a dangerous idea.

Stocks are certificates which claim partial ownership of a company. But how can owning a piece of paper be like owning a part of a company? What is a company anyway but an abstraction over the concept of group liabilities, assets, contracts, and actions? Or do you think companies only exist to allow people to break laws under another identity?

> In the case of commodity futures, it allows commodities to be traded on an exchange where bags of onion seeds would otherwise be difficult to trade.

That is not essential to what futures do. The essence of a future, is that it is a trade that is agreed upon today, but which settles in the future. I sell my corn to you at a price we agree on today for delivery in 3 months. That allows producers and consumers of commodities to reduce risk, while speculators can increase their risk.

Also -- weird but interesting -- the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onion_Futures_Act bans trading futures contracts on onions (and motion picture box office receipts). Not sure if that would apply to onion seed.

"Onion seeds" was a metaphor for future onions.

The question is, what utility?

Thanks for the usual collection of talking points from 2017 that nobody uses in the real world. There is no utility to these blockchain tokens except to scam others.

Americans that frequently need to transfer money (especially overseas) may find stablecoins a good way to effect that without bank fees and delays.

Other countries may not even be allowed to transfer from their bank overseas (I think China in most cases). Some countries have local currency that is devaluating, and banks that are less reliable than a mattress. Some countries have restrictions on the way that money can be stored or retrieved that basically mean that money deposited in the bank can not practically be withdrawn.

For some, the stablecoin is simply a more convenient bank that the one in the city, and in many cases they anyways don't have reportable income.

Other reasons exists for a stablecoin besides criminal activity, especially for people that live in poorer states - and these people are harder hit by losing their cash than would be someone who is in crypto for the ride. It is disingenuous to think its all crypto kiddies.

he already specified it in is his comment: > In the case of USDC it allows USD to exist on the blockchain so that it can interact with smart contracts.

if you wanna question whether smart contracts are useful or not feel free, I sure do, but drop the smarminess when the answer to your question lies within the first paragraph.

Yes, strangely enough, that is exactly what I’m questioning!

They are a terrible idea whose time came and went around 2017.

You are not really questioning, as that would imply you are interested in and/or listening to answers.

It’s more accurate to say that you are “proclaiming”, which is perfectly fine, but doesn’t make for great conversation

Those are not the only possible reasons for stable coins to exist.

The obvious other reason is to use them on the blockchain. You cannot use USD on the blockchain.

Maybe you don't think there's anything of value on the blockchain and that's why you don't see a use for it. I don't want to get into an argument over whether blockchain tech has a use case or a future in this comment chain, but for the sake of understanding what stable coins could be used for just grant the following:

- There is some use for ETH out there that doesn't involve avoiding financial controls and regulations or separating fools from their USD

If you will grant that, then it's easy to see why here would be a use for USDC or similar. ETH price fluctuates. If you need to be able to utilize Ethereum, it's helpful to have value on it. If you don't want that value to fluctuate, you can hold it in USDC and convert to ETH when you want to use it. Plain and simple, this is the first application for stable coins.

If you will not grant that there is a use case for ETH then there's no point in having a discussion about stable coins anyway. That's a separate discussion that needs to be had first.

> There is some use for ETH out there that doesn't involve avoiding financial controls and regulations or separating fools from their USD

I do not grant this, because Ethereum has been around for 7 years and no such uses have materialized yet.

Ok, then there's no point in having the stable coin conversation.

It's obvious why it exists. Dollar liquidity inside of the crypto network ecosystem. You can quickly move out of volatile assets into stable coins. You can transfer these stable coins quickly into and out of wallets and contracts. You cannot do either of these as efficiently with pure fiat which would then require an "IOU" from an exchange which would be less transferable, require trust of the exchange, and would insert friction moving into or out of the $.

If you want to use dollars in a smart contract or otherwise in the crypto "ecosystem" (holding them in a wallet), they are useful. If I were Goldman Sachs, I would have made the "GS Cryptodollar" by now, but we're stuck with weird and untrustworthy stablecoins like Tether and USDC.

By the way, the concept of a "stablecoin" (defined as a currency located in a separate financial system than its home) isn't new - you can buy eurodollar futures which are futures on dollars that are physically located in Europe. Ironically, you can also buy euroeuro futures contracts which are for euros located in the US: the euro- prefix on a currency just means "not delivered inside sovereign borders, although the European eurodollar is by far the most important of these.