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"stablecoins" are not decentralized. If you're going to trust a central issuing and custodial authority for a coin, do you even need crypto technology in the first place?

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The stablecoin argument in failed states is always so funny... yes people in these countries want USD without the legal framework (of their own country and/or the US). It should be pretty clear to anyone that allowing a private and possibly criminal actor like Tether to fulfill this role isn't exactly viable in the long run. For starters when the US DoJ will finally get annoyed that USDT are used to evade international sanctions and launder billions of USD linked to large scale criminal networks, I believe a few people will learn about the ramification of the US extra-territorial jurisdiction. Good luck to your stash of USDT then.

Same with the "funding activists in repressive states" argument. Now you have a few centralized entities that can share data with the authorities. And they do, cf. Binance in Russia.

Ironically a CBDC from a powerful but non-cooperative state like China would probably be much safer for these people in Iran or Venezuela.

And I have always wondered about these stable-coins. Let's take these countries, who in there is willing to trade stable coins with exchange rate of near 1:1 to physical dollars?

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