Stablecoin regulation is the only thing that makes sense. Also for the wrong reasons. But it actually protects customers from getting rekt twice.
First by Tether operating an unbacked IOU network.
And second by USD (hyper)inflation.
People are a bit confused about mica stablecoin regulation. While I think whole MiCA should be rejected as a whole, we have options.
The way I understand it is that Brussels does not like competition in money printing, so they disallowed stablecoins that are not EUR based and EUR based have to be printed in concert with Brussels-Frankfurt. But we are already printing both dollars and euros in the cyphersphere.
What this could mean in practice is ban on offering stablecoins on exchanges for European union customers and ban for businesses accepting these stablecoins.
Here comes a solution. People often confuse payment network and what is sent through the payment network. You can send USD or eur through visa payment network. You can send USDT through Ethereum, Liquid, ... The confusion is with Bitcoin, there is both Bitcoin payment network and Bitcoin as a unit.
I've long said that the best stablecoin is a short position on bitcoin coupled with the bitcoin. For an interesting trust minimized implementation, see DLC channels in @get10101.
So how does this relate to stablecoins? You can have a stabilized position denominated in USD, but still pay with lightning. Merchant does not have to accept stablecoin, if you want to spend stable value. This is between you and your wallet. You can send$100 over lightning - you go long (exiting the short position) and sent SATs worth $100. If the merchant wants to keep it in dollars, they can open a short, but that's the merchant's problem.
Lightning is uniquely positioned to do payments in this way. Settlement is instant and even the position exit and enter can be atomic. No other crypto payment network can do this. I've written about this feature in Orange Flash of Freedom, or see nostr:npub1ey6qdmvzcgcsr883m9nspzz0mm037l26xtardzcskfsvc6gc7jssm9szvp's blog (links in reply).
Another advantage of this way of value stabilization is that there a natural interest rate (called a funding rate). You should be paid for shorting Bitcoin. Well, should is a strong word, but you usually are, because people will pay to go long on Bitcoin.
I think whatever camp you are in, if you like stablecoins here or there, if you want BTC only, or if you are into alts, lightning is what connects it all.
Now someone should go and tell Coinbase commerce, they are a bit slow to get it.
Discussion
Risk to accept BItcoin or Monero directly is minimal as only a very small number of customers will want to pay with cryptocurrency at first. Once the number growth they can hedge their risk. But the same risk applies to USD/EUR and the merchants who know this are indeed better off hedging their fiat risk with accepting native cryptocurrencies.
Tether is much more backed than any other form of USD people have in legacy system except for cash.
The banks' reserve requirements are not even worth a footnote on their balance sheet these days.
Regulating it makes zero sense.
So you say it's a lesser scam. I agree. But a scam never the less.
it would be a scam if they did it dishonestly (like banks do).
tether explains what it is pretty well. you can choose to buy the product or not, but they don't scam you.
it is easy to walk around and yell scam at everything, but to qualify for a scam, you need to actually mislead people, which Tether is not doing.
You seem to have some insights. So far I haven't seen any external public audits.
So it's a lof of trust me bro, at the risk of getting your money confiscated.
Your lack of trust because you don't like audits they publish is not enough to call someone scam. there's no indication they are doing something fishy.
You can say you don't trust them. I short them :)
For something to be a scam, it is not enough that you don't feel well about it. It means they are defrauding people and there's no indication of that.
If it is delivered as promised, it's ok from the scam-no scam scale. People use the word lightly these days, but they should not.
You are either an insider or you trust without being able to verify.
I really don't understand where you are coming from. To me this looks unprincipled and therefore doesn't make sense at all/is dangerous.
It reminds me of another self-proclaimed cypherpunk (Adam Black) who always defends Tether.
His position however makes perfect sense to those who know Tether is a leading investor in Blockstream.
What should we know about you, that we currently don't?