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Bitcoin was originally conceived to be outside the fiat money system as an electronic cash system for a new world. However, at present, the currency standard is still the fiat money standard. The envisaged bitcoin-based settlement system still has no foundation or a wide consensus on the value of the currency standard.
As a compromise, many stablecoins provide a temporary solution for the ecology through a 1:1 anchorage of U.S. dollar, with third-party bank custody becoming mainstream. The rapid growth of Tether and the loss of market share in the face of competition have added more uncertainty to the current market. The decentralization scheme provided by MakerDAO was slightly weak in the initial competition but the reputation gradually accumulated. As the market deepens, cryptocurrencies based on more regional legal currencies are gradually coming online, and people are beginning to try different chain payment attempts.
This article refers to the article Stable Digital Currency Manual by co-founder of Zhibao Mikko, trying to explore the difficulties and future of stablecoin from a currency perspective.
The Difficulties of Bitcoin Settlement System
When it comes to stablecoins, the original idea of Bitcoin has to be mentioned ---- a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Over the past decade, a series of expansions have been made in the blockchain technology and Bitcoin. In people's minds, Bitcoin will be a new generation of the world's monetary system, independent of the fiat money (US dollar) system, to de-intermediate transaction transfers and asset storage, to eliminate asset losses caused by the bank's centralized risk, and put an end to the harvest of wealth brought about by hyperinflation.
In reality, Bitcoin does have somehow established its own trading system - such as black market transactions in the dark network. Dark network commodity trading uses Bitcoin as a medium, and buyers and sellers are also happy to configure a portion of Bitcoin as a value reserve. On the other hand, Bitcoin is the most common trading medium among cryptocurrency exchanges for a long time before the popularity of USDT. Some people said, “Bitcoin is the real stablecoin.” In addition to observing the fluctuations in the value of the fiat money, the traders of various cryptocurrencies will also pay attention to the relationship between cryptocurrency and the bitcoin trading pair. But in this case, this so-called bitcoin-based trading system still has several problems.
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The first is the currency standard: even if some people regard Bitcoin as a gift, they have long believed that Bitcoin will eventually level the volatility and increase the index, but even the so-called beliefs are usually denominated in fiat money (US dollar, Euro, RMB). That is to say, the first problem with Bitcoin is that there is no pricing power. In other words, Bitcoin cannot perform the settlement function extensively in the holder's daily life. The daily benchmarking consensus based on Bitcoin in a wide range is that it doesn't exist at all.
In China, a Coke is 3 RMB, and in the US it is 1 US dollar. The two are under their respective independent settlement systems. If the person in one of the systems happens to come to another system, such as a Chinese who first bought a Coke in the United States, the first reaction is likely to be a cup of 6.71 yuan. Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency does not have a similar settlement system under the independent monetary framework.
In the case that it is not possible to participate extensively in daily pricing, the currency standard is the fiat money standard. For members of the cryptocurrency community, the actual fiat money-based thinking does not directly affect the willingness of buyers and sellers to use Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies for physical purchases, but when Bitcoin’s price against fiat money falls into huge downward fluctuations, it rejects the situation of receiving cryptocurrencies is inevitable.
So the second question directly promotes the strong demand for stablecoins: currency price fluctuations. On the other hand, it should be realized that Bitcoin does not have a complete settlement system and a broad and stable price consensus based on the system; on the other hand, since the initial definition of Bitcoin was an innovation independent of the traditional financial system, even if it is far from the original concept, the community consensus based on the decentralization and token incentives is different from the traditional financial system.
So for a long time, the market could not price bitcoin with the traditional asset framework. The triumph of 2017 has made the society more aware and acknowledged about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency systems. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange CME has put on bitcoin futures at the end of the year. At the same time as government regulation gradually intervenes, the OTC exchange network outside the market is also getting better and better, and the pricing of bitcoin is starting to break away from fanaticism. At the end of 2017, the isolationism of various countries has become stronger, the pace of interest rate hikes of the FED has sped up, and global asset preferences have also undergone subtle changes towards safe-haven assets. China’s domestic capital has advocated “cash is the king” and Bitcoin has entered a down cycle.
As noted above, upside volatility can also encourage traditional merchants to participate in speculation, but downside volatility has caused most merchants to lose their willingness to treat Bitcoin as a currency. In 2018, with the increasingly strong bear market in the cryptocurrency world, the demand for safe-haven and stable-price trading media in the encryption community has skyrocketed, and countless stablecoin projects have been launched. At the same time, Tether, which occupied the absolute market share of stablecoins in 2017, continued to expand against the trend of black box operations.
Third Party Intermediary - Compromise of Fiat Money Stablecoins
The hot currency-backed stablecoin is undoubtedly a compromise of the cryptocurrency market against traditional currencies.
As Nakamoto said in the Bitcoin White Paper, “trade on the Internet almost requires financial institutions to act as trusted third parties to process electronic payment information. Although such systems work well in most cases, such systems are still endogenously constrained by the weakness of the 'trust based model'... We really need an electronic payment system that is based on cryptography rather than credit, making any parties that have reached an agreement can make payments directly, eliminating the need for third-party intermediaries."
Although the article refers to the payment process in the transaction, it is the same in terms of collateral custody. The trust of third-party financial institutions in this mode is inevitable. Trust means that when the custodian bank secretly misappropriates collateral or bankrupts for any reason, the user's assets will be difficult to guarantee, abbreviated as SPOF single point of failure.
But the good news is that when the market competition is fully carried out, the user as a whole is divided into several different groups, and different fiat money stablecoin products with different audit processes under different banks are used. A single point of failure of an individual project does not affect the continued operation of other stablecoin products; and the community response to a single company's evil or potential evil is greatly magnified as the number of competing products increases.
Taking Tether as an example, the giants who once occupied more than 95% of the market share of the stablecoin market finally ignited the trust crisis in the long-term refusal of transparent auditing, and the market share plummeted. In the foreseeable future, Tether will gradually liberalize its transparency and optimize its relationship with users to maintain its current market share. The stablecoin competing products that continue to enter the market will form a continuous multi-disciplinary force on existing projects in the market to promote market improvement and relief centralized risk.
The Rise and Blockage of Tether
The real rise of stablecoin is actually symbolized by Tether's exponential growth in 2017. From the eve of the dawn of 2017 to the day after 20 months, Tether's market value has skyrocketed from less than $7 million to more than $2.8 billion, a 400-fold increase.
USDT Year Chart (green - currency price; blue - market value)
In 2018, the hot stablecoin market, USDT's exclusive access to the stablecoin, and stablecoin’s widespread dissatisfaction with the rejection of third-party audits attracted many competitors. In March, True USD (TUSD) was transparently managed. The name entered the competition. Around October, stablecoins such as USDCoin (USDC), Gemini Dollar (GUSD) and Paxos Standard (PAX), which had strong background, compliance audit and good asset transparency, went online. At about the same time, perhaps the pressure from friends and merchants has soared. It is a coincidence that Tether has successively experienced a series of scandals and then the price collapsed in mid-October, and evaporated 40% of the market value in the following month. After a series of cycles, the situation gradually eased.
The four consecutive stablecoins mentioned above seized the market share and expanded rapidly in the next few months. In the month before the deadline, Tether's stablecoin market share was stable at around 70%, and the remaining market share was occupied by the top four newcomers. In the process of grabbing the market, there were fluctuations, including the only US compliance encryption. The progress of the USDC issued by the currency exchange COINBASE is the most eye-catching, and its market value accounts for about 10% of the overall stablecoin market at the time of writing.
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A simple conclusion is that Tether can still be stable even after the crisis, thanks to Tether's first-mover advantage in its existing position on global exchanges and the high liquidity it represents. The three basic functions of money are pricing units, value storage, and trading media, while liquidity is their common subtext.
The unit price provided by a currency lacking liquidity cannot obtain broad consensus of money users. The lack of consensus leads to price disorder, and the currency thus loses the valuation value. As a value storage and trading medium, it will miss trading object and depth due to low liquidity and cannot complete the basic function as a currency.
Although the new four-dollar collateral stabilized currency occupies its place in the start of the competition with Tether, Tether sits on a whole bull market with a trading history that has a relatively complete trading pair coverage in the world's major exchanges; In addition to the full coverage of the exchange, USDT also has a sound OTC network construction, providing the most direct portal for stocks and potential incremental users. Under the superposition, Tether's endogenous and exogenous liquidity advantages are particularly evident, and even in the case of black box scandals, it can still occupy a fairly strong market share. But with the gradual gradual competition, peer supervision and the gradual enrichment of user-selectable products, Tether's fault-tolerant space for future strategies is not as optimistic as imagined.
HUSD - Self-contained Stablecoins
In response to the October crisis in Tether, the Fire Currency Exchange launched a HUSD Stabilization Coin program.
In this scheme, the Firecoin users will automatically convert to HUSD when they recharge the PAX, TUSD, USDC, and GUSD. HUSD has no actual issuance process, but simply a unit of pricing corresponding to four types of stablecoin recharge. After the user converts one of the stablecoins into HUSD, he or she can freely choose any one to redeem.
The program not only helps users to spread the centralization risk of a single fiat money stablecoin, but also helps the four stable coins to complete the group on the fire currency exchange to cope with the existing liquidity competitive advantage of the USDT. But on the other hand, the user's use of HUSD is based on trust in the fire currency exchange, in other words another single point of failure risk. Therefore, in order to dilute the risk of centralization, it is still necessary to transparently deal with the specific schemes of the fire currency exchange, and the supervision of the fire coins by the community, especially other exchanges.
Decentralization Breakout of Stablecoin
At present, a number of currency-backed stablecoins, led by USDT, cover almost all of the market capitalization and liquidity of the stablecoin market.
In this case, MakerDAO's DAI is extraordinarily precious. The DAI Stabilized Currency System generates a stablecoin DAI through over-collateralization of cryptocurrency. Most of the functions within the system are implemented or planned through the deployment of smart contracts, such as chain generation and redemption of stable coins, management of collateral, and so on. In addition to the DAI as a stablecoin, as a dual currency system, there is another governance currency called MKR in MakerDAO. Governance currency holders support the system's decentralized governance functions while enjoying the overall benefits of the system, and provide additional funding buffers for the system in events such as abnormal currency fluctuations.
In MakerDAO's overall vision, the system first endorses the credit of the stablecoin through the chain of excess collateral, while the interest generated by the credit function (the essence of DAI generated by the mortgage cryptocurrency is a lending process), the collateral under abnormal fluctuations The profit from the flat penalty triggered by Ping and the more financial derivative function to support the system's self-operation.
One of the biggest conflicts between the community and the cryptocurrency collateral currency is the risk exposure of the collateral in the warehouse when the cryptocurrency generates a stablecoin. Although in theory the users of the stablecoin can be separated from the mortgagor, the mortgagor can be a more risk-tolerant group, such as an eager borrower, a professional user of financial instruments, etc., but since the stablecoin is issued The identity of the person itself is subject to a natural limitation based on the degree of risk aversion, and its supply has an additional limit.
On the other hand, there is a limited source of information about Ethereum as a single collateral: the mortgagor is limited to holders of Ethereum. In MakerDAO's plan, the multi-collateral version of the system will gradually improve with iteration, and the achievement of this program will effectively reduce the risk of the MakerDAO collateral asset portfolio and increase the potential DAI generation limit. Ample supply and liquidity of the DAI will help activate the system in more possibilities on the market.
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Compared to the competition between the four newcomers and the USDT, the position of MakerDAO is quite different. If the user's choice between the four newcomers and the USDT is a trade-off between liquidity (product usability) and security, then between USDT and DAI is liquidity (product usability) and decentralized belief. The trade-off. As far as the market is concerned, MakerDAO's dual currency system seems to explain better how the project side can continue the project through the circulation of profits. Many of the fiat money-backed stablecoin projects have always wondered whether they will realize their own coinage rights in the future and thus harm the user's property rights.
As a successful decentralized stablecoin project, MakerDAO is one of the most successful projects on Ethereum. This is both a tribute to the MakerDAO development path: the development of other projects (dApp) on the Ethereum and the overall robustness of the ecology. As the second generation of the public chain, Ethereum pioneered the concept of smart contract, which is a milestone in the development of application on the chain. However, in the course of many years of development, the performance of the main network and the fragmentation technology have been delayed. So although MakerDAO claims that DAI will have many chain advantages as ERC20 tokens, it seems that the eApp side of Ethereum has not seen a good development momentum.
It is worth mentioning that in the performance of the public chain and dApp development, the EOS public chain has developed rapidly since the launch of the main network in 2018. If EOS has a stablecoin project like MakerDAO, and can properly handle potential security issues in the operation process (such as the potential risks caused by the scalability of the contract, etc.), there is much to be done. After all, in addition to seeking cooperation under the chain, the pricing system of cryptocurrency is more important to find and create niches that belong only to the world of cryptocurrency. A robust dApp ecology with a constant need for stable coins or the only possible form of this niche.
Choice Outside the U.S. Dollar
The few stablecoins currently circulating the most are anchoring the US dollar. There is no doubt that the status of the dollar in the current world currency system is irreplaceable. The bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies described in the beginning of the article lack the independent settlement system, and the US dollar is the extreme of the other end – the currency with the most complete settlement framework in the world.
From the gold standard to the Bretton Woods system, to the current global commodity and foreign exchange trading system centered on the US dollar-oil trading system, the three functions of currency pricing, storage and circulation are reflected in the US dollar. As the currency with the most universal purchasing power and deep trading depth, the US dollar has naturally become the primary anchor for many stablecoins that pursue international influence. The dependence of the stablecoin on the US dollar is a last resort. While stabilizing the dollar, the stablecoin not only enjoys the liquidity advantage brought by the dollar, but also inherits the volatility risk of the dollar itself. Although the US dollar is still the most trustworthy currency on a macro level, if A's main payment scenario is in Country A, and Country A's currency has a large appreciation of the US dollar due to market factors, then the asset holding the anchored US dollar. Bringing a higher base point risk to A.
Among the many non-US dollar currencies, the yen is one of the most distinctive currencies. The Japanese government has a positive attitude towards blockchain technology. In April 2017, it recognized the legal payment status of Bitcoin and formulated a series of laws and regulations for the exchange. At the same time, Japan is also one of the most active participants in the cryptocurrency market. At the end of 2018, Japanese IT giant GMO Internet announced that it plans to introduce a yen-linked cryptocurrency in 2019 to prepare for the next phase of cross-border settlement. The emergence of a liquid currency-stable yen stablecoin will not only help Japanese crypto community members to better participate in daily market behavior, but also help cross-border currency settlement. In addition, due to Japan’s domestic economic structure, monetary policy has maintained ultra-low interest rates for a long time. Under this premise, investors are more willing to invest in sovereign countries with higher interest rates, especially the United States. When the United States is in turmoil, funds are largely returned to the yen, which has a very low risk attribute, which raises the yen and lowers the dollar. Therefore, the emergence of the yen stablecoin can also provide a better safe haven for holders of USD stabilized coins such as USDT in the potential dollar crisis.
In addition to the yen, the private sector or the government of Australia, the euro zone and other countries are also involved in the development and deployment of their domestic currency stablecoin. While the vast majority will still be a similarly centralized bank hosting model, it should still be seen as an improvement and rationally expecting a more equitable and efficient system.
The Future Direction of the Stablecoin
As mentioned at the beginning of the article, the original idea of the cryptocurrency community for Bitcoin was to create a decentralized financial system that would be independent of the traditional monetary system. However, due to the lack of an independent and complete settlement system, or the lack of a broad currency-based pricing consensus, the cryptocurrency world cannot be formed into a real monetary system, and it has to rely on the attachment to the US dollar or other currencies to achieve long-term scenarios. Valuation of prices in cryptocurrencies, etc. Although Bitcoin itself has the believer of the currency standard, the foundation of the belief is mostly based on the re-exponential rise of the price of the bitcoin, which is still the thinking of fiat money.
Given that there is a consensus that goods can only be denominated in currency A in the payment and settlement system of country A, if the cryptocurrency world wants to form an independent payment settlement system, the best pricing unit for the purchase should be cryptocurrency. The anchoring of the U.S. dollar and other fiat money is just to use the currency attribute (otherwise the currency credit cannot be established), and will destruct the consensus to regard cryptocurrency as the best pricing unit and establish an independent monetary system (the cost of convenience). The power of habit is hard to overcome, and the habit of paying the currency of a chain certainly needs to be achieved by the widespread purchase of assets on the chain. This process requires gradual improvement of the payment scenario between stablecoin systems and dApps.
The cryptocurrency eco-walls we mentioned above are based on the hope of this exclusive chain-based settlement system. The simple dApp on the chain is obviously not enough. We also have two topics to be studied in the chain payment scenario and asset chaining. Users must complete the process from chain to chain and back to chain to integrate cryptocurrency pricing into everyday habitual thinking.
Then, the stablecoin will gradually deepen into people's daily life after several decades, while the banknotes gradually withdraw from the trading scene, and the sub-generation gradually accepts the new cryptocurrency value settlement system.
Reference:
Stable Digital Currency Manual
(http://wisburg.com/2018/07/03/稳定数字货币手册/)
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