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Comment by moneywoes | Hacker News Reader

Are there any legitimate stable coins?

The U.S. Mint apparently is producing a brass/manganese- clad copper $1 coin called the "American Innovation dollars".[1]

You could try that.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Innovation_dollars

Dunno, I hear they're planning a big dilution soon. https://www.axios.com/trillion-dollar-platinum-coin-mint-jan...

Increase in supply is not inflation. It’s quite unlikely to cause any actual measurable dilution. But let’s pretend for a second. Given that all major stable coins are pegged to or benchmarked against the dollar, any inflation in the dollar would carry over into stable coins 1:1 so the remark would be a nonsequitur.

The way it's supposed to work is you then fall back on the intrinsic value of the copper. That's the 'coin' part of what the 'Mint' does.

And where do I get a coin made of copper?

Nah, as soon as inflation makes it profitable to melt coins, they make melting coins illegal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(United_States_coin)#Num...

Older US pennies (pre-1982) have copper worth much more than 1 cent now, newer ones are basically zinc.

On the flip side, a US mint $50 piece is actually well over $2000 of gold [https://catalog.usmint.gov/american-eagle-2021-one-ounce-gol...]

The imprimature of the US mint is what makes these coins now.

No. USDC was long considered the adult in the room, but they started going off the rails earlier this year, dropping the 1:1 promise, delaying attestations and also now facing heavy regulatory scrutiny.

If anything, USDC has been reducing its risk profile from what I'm seen. Recently they announced they will be replacing all of their remaining corporate-bond-backing with USD cash and US treasuries. Source for your claims to the contrary?

August 2021: https://beincrypto.com/coinbase-drops-guarantee-of-usdc-stab...

SEC subpoena literally yesterday: https://coingeek.com/usdc-issuer-circle-financial-subpoenaed...

The August 2021 change seems to be in response to a disclosure, that revealed more about USDC, than had been known in the past. This is a move toward more transarency and accuracy, not in USDC becoming less backed.

And CoinGeek is a notoriously anti-decentralization media outlet. It's a mouthpiece for BSV, whose founder, Craig Wright, has called for anonymity to be abolished in cryptocurrencies, and for miners who process decentralized exchange transactions to be jailed.

Did you just call a SEC subpoena FUD?

There is no indication that this is due to some recent misbehavior by USDC's issuer, as opposed to an independent decision by the SEC to subject stablecoins in general to its control.

I’m a major skeptic of the space, and even I haven’t actually heard anything shady about the Gemini dollar. Which is why I suspect nobody is uses it, but I digress.

Gemini (GUSD) I believe is fairly solid

Checkout xUSD from https://havenprotocol.org/knowledge/

Are there any legitimate cryptocurrencies? Stable coins as just another layer of scam built upon a foundation of scams.

> Are there any legitimate cryptocurrencies?

maybe the ones like lbry or steam.. publishing payment tokens.

Almost all of them are legitimate. Most of them are speculative, but that doesn't mean they're a scam.

Freicoin exists and nobody adopted it. That kind of tells you everything you need to know. Freicoin was designed with a -5% interest rate to defeat speculation and encourage people to spend their money quickly. It also means that Freicoin loans are very affordable because even a 0% loan lets the lender avoid paying -5% interest.

Monero

AFAIK I think Terra’s UST is pretty legit

I think Binances BUSD is the closest to legitimate

Binance is the last institution you should be stapling the concept of stability to. They’re literally under investigation by every major world financial authority, including by the Cayman Islands monetary authority.

BUSD is a co-brand issued by Paxos.

No idea how it would hold up once the bear trap snaps shut on Binance.

Is free banking seeing a resurgence with all these stablecoins? Basically, people replaced bank notes with cryptocurrencies. It's still the same concept.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_banking

Yes, quarters, dimes, and nickels, are all excellent stablecoins pegged to USD.

If you're looking for a CAD stablecoin, checkout loonies and twonies.

If you want a legitimate USD-backed stablecoin, USDC is it.

MIM - they lean into the “magic internet money” meme because they don’t need to convince people of its seriousness. It is collateralized by asset backed and interest bearing cryptos that earn transaction fees such as xSUSHI

DAI - but the MakerDao system has worse collateral than MIM, no interest bearing assets to my knowledge, but that can easily change with votes

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