Replying to Avatar Guy Swann

Tether is not a CBDC.

It's literally a BDC

Tether is not a central bank, they don't issue notes of an independent monetary unit. They aren't associated with any govt. Tether is just a modern banknote with most of the same problems, risks, and trust issues. The difference being it is available to anyone with a smart phone without an account -- which is actually a significant improvement over the old garbage.

Tether is custodian issued digital banknotes. Literally in every use of those terms this is the accurate thing to call it. "Cash" has always just referred to banknotes issued that were redeemable in gold or at a bank that was a bearer asset. The difference with a stablecoin like Tether and physical cash is the oversight/surveillance that the institution has for the digital alternative. This is why ecash is actually the only thing that digitally shares basically all the characteristics of physical cash (txn privacy from issuer and bearer asset). Tether is far easier to freeze accounts and spy on what everyone is doing. Obviously why people want to label it "something bad."

My point is that the CBDC label is NOT accurate, and when we use words and labels arbitrarily, it desensitizes people to them. If people just become "whatever" about Tether (because if you don't use it, who cares), and everyone calls it a CBDC, then after a few years of this people are just going to think "CBDCs are fine, who cares?"

Calling everything we don't like a CBDC is a HUGE BENEFIT to actual CBDCs.

Bank digital currencies are not a problem. They will remain solvent as long as the "bank" does. They are a much better option than credit cards, and the option of being able to issue ecash is even better.

BDCs are certainly a far cry from the #Bitcoin sovereign world that we are building and have nothing to do with it, but they are ALSO a far cry from a genuine CBDC.

So please, stop using words that matter in a stupid and cheap way, because when we REALLY need them, you'll have sucked them of all of their power and meaning.

Agreed. It also pisses me off whenever I see "hardware wallet". It's not a damn wallet, it's a signing device. And I don't think this will ever be corrected.

And yeah, Tether is an example of a shitcoin I don't want or need but to others it may have an actual use case (the unbanked that need short term stability and no access to physical dollars)

I'm toxic where toxicity is justified, this is not one of those cases. At some point though, they will be captured by evil because they CAN BE. (In case they aren't yet)

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

“It also pisses me off whenever I see "hardware wallet". It's not a damn wallet, it's a signing device.”

Thanks for expressing the same frustration I have

Absolutely, it's already difficult enough for newcomers to understand the technical aspects and plain wrong descriptions such as these are very confusing.