Coinbase is launching support for the USDC stablecoin • Hacker News Board

Re: Coinbase is launching support for the USDC stablecoin

#171

Post by 0x8BADF00D » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:35 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #135

dwild wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Square Cash Confirm your country United States United Kingdom Venmo There are two main requirements for using Venmo: You must be physically located in the United States You must have a U.S. cell phone that can send/receive text messages from short codes (please note that this phone number can not be on file with another Venmo account) Your definition of the term exactly doesn't seems exact at all. I can use USDC as m…

Why are you sending US Dollars between yourselves as Canadians? You can’t spend them in Canada, why not use a free and instant Interac e-Transfer? If you want to hold USD (as a hedge against CAD) open a US Dollar denominated account at any major Canadian bank but that’s an investment not a store of value. Or open an interactive brokers account if you want to trade currencies. And if you want to move money to another…

> This is not solving a problem that isn’t otherwise solved except money laundering and skirting AML/KYC rules. Look I may well be wrong, but can you suggest a use case I haven’t considered?

I could see a decent amount of usage for dApp developers or anyone who wants micro transactions on their platform. That being said, “stablecoin” is probably quite useless outside of that very narrow use case.

Re: Coinbase is launching support for the USDC stablecoin

#172

Post by stickfigure » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #135

dwild wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Square Cash Confirm your country United States United Kingdom Venmo There are two main requirements for using Venmo: You must be physically located in the United States You must have a U.S. cell phone that can send/receive text messages from short codes (please note that this phone number can not be on file with another Venmo account) Your definition of the term exactly doesn't seems exact at all. I can use USDC as m…

Why are you sending US Dollars between yourselves as Canadians? You can’t spend them in Canada, why not use a free and instant Interac e-Transfer? If you want to hold USD (as a hedge against CAD) open a US Dollar denominated account at any major Canadian bank but that’s an investment not a store of value. Or open an interactive brokers account if you want to trade currencies. And if you want to move money to another…

I don't have an informed opinion on this whole stablecoin thing, but...

There isn't a single country in the world today where you can't spend a US dollar. Canadians will happily take them, especially at a 1:1 exchange rate.

Re: Coinbase is launching support for the USDC stablecoin

#173

Post by gwbas1c » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

wcoenen wrote: post #163

gwbas1c wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Despite this, no one on Twitter[1] seemed excited Because most people think that in order to solve the problem of a cryptocurrency, they have to also solve the problem of who gets money when you print it. Far too many people conflate the need for electronic cash versus the need to improve upon how systems like the Federal Reserve and their International equivalents work. Honestly, as a software engineer who underst…

> I think cryptocurrency becomes far more interesting when it's not trying to solve the problem of who gets money when it's printed This was not the goal of bitcoin. The goal was to remove the need for trusted intermediaries from electronic payments. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

The primary goal of Bitcoin was to be an experiment.

Re: Coinbase is launching support for the USDC stablecoin

#174

Post by celticninja » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #50

askafriend wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not save shares of the S&P 500 index? You just sell some when you want to buy something like a car.

This right here, literally how it’s supposed to work. “Money becomes worth less over time, what should I do?” “Invest in productive assets” “OHHHHHHHHH” There, we just saved you from having to go to an Econ class :P

So if I have a $2000 how much of that do lose in fees when I buy shares? Sure it makes sense if I am saving $1000 or more a month but it doesn't work when I'm saving $50 to $100 a month for my kids college education, fees eat that up the same way that inflation does, but both make hardly any difference to the person saving $1000 or more a month.

Re: Coinbase is launching support for the USDC stablecoin

#175

Post by ThrustVectoring » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

lacker wrote: post #97

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #63

"Stablecoin" in general generates a ton of legal risk for the operators. If you can make peer-to-peer transactions with it, then the coin operators are definitely not complying with Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering laws. This will pretty reliably get the US Feds to raid your offices, seize your website and servers, arrest the principles responsible, and prosecute them. See also: Liberty Reserve. On the ot…

If you can make peer-to-peer transactions with it, then the coin operators are definitely not complying with Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering laws. You can certainly make peer-to-peer transactions with it. But I think you are misinterpreting the KYC laws. Circle (who operates USDC) isn't trying to be secretive about this. They are regulated as a "money transmitter" and a "money services business" - https:…

If I was working at that company I'd be sending out my resume and looking for alternatives.

Re: Coinbase is launching support for the USDC stablecoin

#176

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:43 PM UTC

lez wrote: post #160

lacker wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another key drawback of USDC is that your account can be frozen by the centralized authority: USDC tokens are ERC-20 compatible and can be used with any ERC-20 compatible digital wallet. However, a global blacklist is maintained by CENTRE for USDC, which prevents tokens from being sent into or from blacklisted addresses. Reasons for blacklisting could include known fraudulent or illegal activity, or a legal order or…

I always look at askance to USD-in-a-bank-account backed stablecoins. There's no innovation in them. Their value also depends on how many USD's stored in that bank account (not transparent to ordinary people), and the inherent problem with USD - that the FED, a central authority prints it, remains still. There are other - in my opinion more honest - crypto-only stablecoins, like Dai (of MakerDAO) or Augmint, which ar…

[deleted]

Re: Coinbase is launching support for the USDC stablecoin

#177

Post by lacker » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:44 PM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #154

lacker wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another key drawback of USDC is that your account can be frozen by the centralized authority: USDC tokens are ERC-20 compatible and can be used with any ERC-20 compatible digital wallet. However, a global blacklist is maintained by CENTRE for USDC, which prevents tokens from being sent into or from blacklisted addresses. Reasons for blacklisting could include known fraudulent or illegal activity, or a legal order or…

So what benefits does this have over PayPal then?

Since it's an Ethereum token, you can write a smart contract that uses USDC.

Re: Coinbase is launching support for the USDC stablecoin

#178

Post by goodside » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:46 PM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #151

lawn wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but you can’t trade anywhere Just trade on all the other less regulated exchanges. Or localbitcoin. Or, you know, buy stuff. > and speculation is crypto’s only use case today. Or you buy stuff... For example: * Webhallen (huge Swedish online shop) * scan.co.uk (uk based computer online shop) * purse.io (buy stuff from amazon) * fastmail (emails) * VPN/VPS/domains from various providers * darknetmarkets

If they don't use the blacklist, will they get added to the blacklist? (Is it viral?)

Yes. This is what Chainalysis does, among many other things — track tainted coins that people are intentionally obscuring the origin of.

Re: Coinbase is launching support for the USDC stablecoin

#179

Post by wtfrmyinitials » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

Permit wrote: post #11

Stablecoins seem like they would achieve most of the goals of the original cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin: - Decentralized transactions - 24/7 access - Low fees - Store of value I suppose the only drawback here is that they're issued from a centralized authority. That said, for practical purposes the vast majority of Bitcoin holders didn't mine their own coins either. Despite this, no one on Twitter[1] seemed excit…

> they're (stablecoins) are issued from a centralized authority.

Nitpick: there is at least one decentralized stablecoin: Dai https://makerdao.com/

Re: Coinbase is launching support for the USDC stablecoin

#180

Post by jdoliner » Tue, Oct 23, 2018, 6:48 PM UTC

anders94 wrote: post #155

Hi, I'm Anders Brownworth, Chief Evangelist at Circle. I'm happy to answer any questions on USD Coin, CENTRE or Circle. We're also hiring! See https://circle.careers/

Does Circle keep enough dollars on hand to buy back every USDC? Or do you run a fractional reserve? How much money is that total? What do you do if you have as many USDCs in circulation as you have dollars? Stop issuing them?