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points by jml7c5 8 hours ago | 0 comments

The value in USDT and USDC comes from the fact that they can (theoretically) be redeemed for real US dollars. One thing the issuers can do is announce "we will never accept redemption requests for these particular stolen coins", making them more or less worthless.

[–] grey-area 7 hours ago

Oh so you're saying a central authority can declare your currency worthless at any time? Good to know. Sounds very like a central bank issued currency though?

[–] codedokode 6 hours ago

It's literally in USDT contract [1], see line 264. USDT is implemented as a contract in several other networks like ETH and has a blacklist. So every USDT operation is a record in ETH blockchain that calls one of the methods (like "transfer" or "add to blacklist").

[1] https://etherscan.io/address/0xdAC17F958D2ee523a220620699459...

[–] dlubarov 3 hours ago

This is a purely optional part of the crypto ecosystem, so I don't see how it's an argument against crypto in general.

One can also burn tokens, just as one can burn cash, but we don't tend to hold that against either systems since it's purely optional.

[–] cowlevel 7 hours ago

Stablecoins are literally central banks. Decentralised coins are literally decentralised central banks. Bitcoin's algorithm is a central bank.

[–] grey-area 7 hours ago

Well I don't think they're very decentralised, which was the original premise.

Any rules can and have been changed by those with leverage to do so (be that exchanges, miners or devs), in the end any system like this storing value is captured and controlled.

[–] broken-kebab 4 hours ago

They are decentralized cause they operate on a sort of consensus between nodes as was original premise. Are they "very decentralized" depends on your definition of "very", of course, and techical realities of a particular situation.

[–] icepush 6 hours ago

Decentralized central banks - are these the finance equivalent of dehydrated water ?