Stable Coins: The Basics

 

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January 15, 2022

 Stable Coins: The Basics

After Bitcoin, the most important coins in the space are stable coins. Some stables are risky because many are unregulated by the SEC and the dollars that back them have not been audited by any third parties. This makes it possible for money to be stolen from users using stable coins. However, in this article we will be going over many of the attributes of stable coins including the following list.

1.       What are stable coins?

2.       How can stable coins be used?

3.       How to evaluate a stable coin

4.       What are the top stable coins in today’s cryptocurrency market?

5.       What is the SEC’s plans for regulation?

6.       Where do I find information about each stable coin and the issuer

In essence, stable coins are cryptocurrencies that are pegged to the United States Dollar. These coins allow you to be within crypto and still have the price stability of the dollar. This allows citizens in developing countries to save dollars and have access to dollars. These stable coins can be used to save and spend United States dollars where the native currency is highly inflationary. All stable coins are not created equal and its important to understand the difference between algorithmic stable coins and cash backed stable coins. Professionally audited, compliant, cash backed stable coins are considered the safest stable coins in the industry. Algorithmic stable coins use complicated math to maintain price and often lose peg. They have proven to be unreliable during my years in crypto.

 Stable coins can be used to save on exchanges, personal hot wallets, in cold storage or can be loaded on a crypto convertible debit card and used to purchase goods and services anywhere a debit card is accepted. You can normally earn anywhere from 1% - 8% yield by yield farming or using some of the yield generating services on some of the major centralized exchanges. Stable coins can also be sent to individual wallets similarly to how dollars can be transferred.

The best way to evaluate a stable coin is to check to see how it has been audited and how the coin has performed in the past. Older stable coins are less risky and have seen more downturns and experienced more pressure to de-peg. My personal preference is stable coins that are backed by physical cash inside of a bank account that is audited by a third party. There are many options on which stable coin to choose. USDC is the leader regarding this type of stable coin. They are a fully audited and physically backed crypto. Another leader regarding stable coins is DAI. DAI is minted based on the amount of funds locked in the Compound Protocol, which is a decentralized lending and borrowing protocol. It is the most stable and reputable crypto backed stable coin. I’ll include references to more information on both stable coins below.

MakerDAO | An Unbiased Global Financial System

USD Coin (USDC) | Crypto that’s held to a higher standard | Circle

The situation that we currently have with regulation is one of uncertainty. The thing that we can be certain of though is that regulation is coming within the industry this year. We can expect that after the FTX fiasco and the Terra Luna collapse that the SEC (Securities Exchange Commission) will introduce laws regulating stable coins. Contrary to popular belief regulation is an extremely good thing for crypto. This regulation will allow more of the world’s sovereign wealth to enter the cryptocurrency space. Regulation is a major steppingstone to giving us a $100,000 Bitcoin. Also, as a side note, Bitcoin has already been officially labeled as a commodity by the SEC. This also adds to the credibility of this financial asset similarly to oil, wheat, corn, or coffee beans. The only information that the SEC has given on their plans for regulation in the crypto space is that they have plans for stable coins in 2023. Anything other than that is purely speculation. What you do know for sure is that representatives from the leading stable coins in the industry will be looking for the opportunity to influence that regulation to make it favorable for users and stable coin issuers.

 

The best place to find information on each stable coin is the official websites of each coin. Since each of these coins is a cryptocurrency, they all have whitepapers outlining how they are designed and how each coin will react in the event of a bank run. I think it’s important to understand what youre investing in before you place your capital. One of the biggest lessons that we learned from Terra Luna is to look at where the yield is coming from. A hard, set amount of yield it hard to sustain. Terra Luna was promising 20% paid out in a stable coin and the coin de-pegged. I also want to mention a few other decent stable coins that may not be industry leaders but have done well to make it through this bear market so far. A quiet stable coin is the best type of stable coin. Some crypto users have experienced personal issues with using a stable coin that issued by a company in comparison to one that is issued by a smart contract. I like to diversify my stable coin holdings as well. Hopefully I’ve given you enough information to make an educated decision on holding a cash equivalent.

 

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From The Depths of The Crypto Winter: 2022 In Review

2022 WRAP UP

BACKED BY BITCOIN BLOG

DECEMBER 31, 2022

 

FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE CRYPTO WINTER

2022 has been a tumultuous year. It seems like we have had negative news after negative news resulting in red candle after red candle in the price of bitcoin. This year has resulted in an epic drop from $69,000 BTC to the lows for the year of $15,500. While this seems like an insane drop that the market cannot come back from, the crypto industry has endured many scandals, hacks, and aggressive corrections in its short history. In past cycles the price of Bitcoin has dropped around 85% from the euphoric highs after rising thousands of percent from the lows of the previous cycle. We currently end the year around 79% down from the high as we proceed into 2023. I’ll include some charts at the end of this blog to get a good macro look at what has transpired this year and what has transpired in previous cycles.

Getting to some of the crises that happened, and the lessons learned from those. I think these are things we need to take with us into the future as we create the infrastructure for a new form of money. To start the year macro factors caused sell offs of all risk assets including stocks and cryptocurrencies. It seemed harder and for Bitcoin to continue to hold at key support levels. The Terra Luna collapse caused Bitcoin to fall under $30,000 and the later FTX scandal caused additional ripples throughout the industry.

 As we unpack what happened we have some key lessons to understand. These lessons are foundational to cryptocurrency, and they are incredibly easy to forget when you enter the euphoric phase of The Wall Street Cheat Sheet. It is imperative that we understand and respect the importance of self-custody. We also got a chance to watch decentralized finance operate to perfection. Liquidations happened with the falling prices however, the liquidations happened within predetermined smart contract parameters. This was a risk that all users clearly understood

The Terra Luna Collapse

Terra Luna saw the almost overnight erosion of 40B in wealth. This happened due to a de-peg of the stable coin that was associated with the Luna coin which resulted in a large amount of FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) surrounding the Luna coin. There are many explanations on why and how this happened. I choose to focus on how this happened and the lessons we should learn from this. Luna was giving out 20% APR paid out in stable coins. In my opinion, this was unsustainable and the reason why I stayed away from Luna. However, many of counterparts were jumping in. I personally saw a colleague of mine lose millions in this ecosystem. I kept my cash on the sideline and continued to dollar cost average into altcoins with use case. 

Terra Luna showed all the signs of something that was unsustainable. The red flags were how quickly the market cap grew and understanding we were in a bull market. There was also the issue of 20% APR when other platforms were giving you 8%-10%. Also, we have to learn to trust our gut on things. It’s better not to make money than to lose money. This was shown in the catastrophic events of Terra Luna. However, the year wasn’t over.

The FTX Scandal

This is the one that I thought was obvious. I saw the rise of Alameda Research. I saw all the memes surrounding Sam Bankman-Fried and I saw all the money, big partnerships, and regulatory relationships as well. I was skeptical because I knew for a fact there were players that had bigger exchanges and a longer running reputation within the crypto industry. I saw all the YouTube partnerships FTX had going on. I saw Miami Heat arena and the World Series & Superbowl ad campaigns. I saw it all for exactly what it turned out to be. I saw it as something to be avoided and again something unsustainable. Crypto is about the long game and it is to be played in 4-year cycles. Crypto is also a game of self-custody and to me it seems like large investors want someone else to be responsible for their money. Crypto is about being responsible for yourself and holding your own keys. You are the only one who should be able to access your money. 

We should have learned during terra luna how important security and self-custody are. People who have been in crypto for any number of years have seen hacks of exchanges. We have seen malicious developers create tokens which resulted in rug pulls. This is nothing new. This is happening on such a large scale because institutional players have not studied the history to understand what has been built and what true ownership is. Cryptocurrency is for the purpose of empowering us to be our own bank, not create new banks that exist on a blockchain. This idea of decentralization is what The New World Bankers are built on. This belief system is what will make us as free as we want to be.

 

In Review

We talked about the two largest collapses of the year within the blockchain industry. We also talked about the mindset that it will take to avoid these types of losses in the future and to be smarter investors as we navigate these markets. We talked about how to spot a sustainable model and we talked a lot about self-custody. 2022 proved to be a lesson in simplicity. Our main rules should be based on self-custody principles.  The majority of our wealth should either be in cold storage, locked in a smart contract because it’s being borrowed against, held in a wallet as DAI or USDC or invested in an alt-coin with utility. Exchanges should be used to go from fiat and into crypto.

 They should not be used for storage. I do store a small amount to be able to use my crypto debit cards, but we need to become much more paranoid about the security of our money. This year taught us that we cannot trust others to be responsible for our money. We either exercise financial sovereignty or pay the ultimate price. Many people experienced the destruction of their wealth this year, it’s important that we recognize this as part of the cycle and learn the important lessons that the market is teaching us.

 

Technical Analysis Section

In this section I wanted to highlight a few charts that I think is relevant to how we need to see 2022 and how we need to understand this cyclical market. The Wall Street Cheat Sheet will also outline the psychology of the market and understanding where we are relative to this sheet should influence our decisions. Not the macro news, not price, not the word of celebrities and not popularity. These charts give us the hard data that we need to be able to make calculated decisions in this market. In case you can’t tell, we are in between anger and depression according to the Wall Street Cheat Sheet. The FTX scandal was complete clear as day capitulation. We can probably look forward to a long, boring crypto winter. I plan to accumulate as much as I possibly can at these levels and take the lessons of 2022 into the future.

To Your Success,

Donny Diamond Hands