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Comment by smoovb | Hacker News Reader

All great US-centric points! If you're living in Venezuela, Turkey, Argentina, Russia, Poland or other country with anywhere from 15 to 167% inflation, you might just be happy to have access to USD via easy to get stablecoins.

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I'm glad you wrote this. It's eroding to constantly see financial advice that is impossible to apply in countries like these except for crypto and are mostly US/Europe centric. Sometimes, there simply is no other choice and that's crypto's killer use-case.

What are you talking about? I have direct access to buying USD via my Turkish and Russian banks. Rates and comissions are quite reasonable. Of course there are risks right now, especially in Russia, but they are incomparable with risks of putting your money into some virtual bytes someone told you should just work (and we have real life examples of some of them doing quite opposite).

The important bit about savings accounts and MMFs isn't specific to a country. Its about openness, regulation, and public trust.

I can confidently buy Schwab, Capital One, Vanguard, or other funds in the USA (without any research) because the US Government regulates the words "Money Market". Anyone claiming to be "Money Market" follows strict regulations and guidelines.

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This is NOT true for stablecoins. Stablecoins attempt to recreate the same thing but without openness, without regulations, and without audits.

They work because people "want" them. Everyone wants a bank, especially one tied to the US Dollar. Unfortunately, the easiest way to get one is to simply lie about your connections.

Do we truly know that Tether is tied to the US Dollar? No. We don't. There's been no audits. The yields generated from such loans are innately at risk. I recognize that people in other countries want that kind of trust, but you can't just fake trust. You have to rebuild it up from the ground up.

In those other countries, other entities must build that trust for themselves. Tether obviously wants to be such an entity, but I have my doubts to their legitimacy and safety.

If the argument it allows these people more stability / wealth to circumvent currency controls of their country, I don't see why the argument can't be extended to first / wealthy worlders as well. To note, I'm for deregulating these currency controls and deregulating the banking system, but giving 3rd worlders a pass while being harsher on those richer than us just seems like crab in a bucket mentality (not accusing you of that, but I've noticed HN exhibiting this duality).

How is it difficult to get USD access in Poland?

You can open USD nominated checking account in almost every bank, for example[0]. You can exchange PLN for USD bills ( no coins) with spread 3% in any city[1].

[0] https://www.bankmillennium.pl/en/individuals/current-account...

[1]https://quantor.pl/#

For Russia and Venezuela you may have a point. But the others in that list still have much better (in terms of risk/reward) options for protecting their wealth than stablecoins.

what))) nobody in their right mind would buy magic internet coins when you can just buy USD/EUR at any bank branch with zero tax implications/risks.

Is this a joke? Russia literally restricted foreign currency usage, you can't get USD with you anywhere and you can't transfer it overseas. And no-one is able to use banking obviously. I bet in other countries there are the same issues and many people are unbanked.

This is blatant lie. I can show you my SWIFT transactions out of Russia. There are restrictions on USD cash, so you have alternative rate for paper money, but you still can legally exchange RUB cash to USD cash.

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