An important point that we seem to have totally forgotten and it's so sad to say the least.
quoting
naddr1qq…u4pyI just came across a tweet by Tether founder Paolo Ardoino in which he seemed to be celebrating the fact that “USDT is now coming home to Bitcoin”or, to put it plainly, that USDT will soon be transmitted via Bitcoin rails such as Lightning. While I have generally struggled with the idea of why stablecoins exist in the first place, this took it up a notch. I was left completely dumbfounded and maniacally bewildered. Who on earth, apart from Paolo of course, thinks that putting dollar liabilities on Bitcoin is somehow a triumph for Bitcoin?
Perhaps we need to go back to basics. Why does Bitcoin exist? What problem was it created to solve? Bitcoin exists to destroy centralized control of money by central bankers, the credit-based monetary system designed to enslave everyone within its orbit. Fiat money is a house of cards built on broken promises and broken trust, forced on us at gunpoint while our wealth is siphoned through inflation and taxes. Bitcoin did not emerge because the world desperately needed another database for issuing financial assets. It emerged because money had become inseparable from political power, credit expansion and institutional trust.
When money can be created and manipulated by a central authority, the consequences are not confined to a spreadsheet at a central bank. Monetary intervention distorts prices, misallocates capital, encourages malinvestment, socializes losses and silently transfers purchasing power from those who earn and save money toward those closest to the monetary spigot.
Bitcoin introduced money with no issuer, no central monetary committee and no promise to redeem it for something else. Bitcoin's genius isn't that it makes existing money move faster, but it's in that IT IS AN ALTERNATIVE TO FIAT MONEY. It's at this juncture that stablecoins become contradictory.
Stablecoins are nothing more than fiat containers that extend the life of the US dollar. USDT and USDC are dollar derivatives backed by treasuries and commercial paper, meaning every stablecoin in circulation is a bet that U.S. sovereign debt is good collateral, which is precisely the bet Bitcoin was invented to let you stop making. Worse, stablecoins inherit every centralized failure mode Bitcoin was built to route around: issuers can freeze balances, blacklist wallets, and comply with subpoenas in real time. Tether has done exactly this; frozen addresses at law enforcement's request, multiple times. In other words stablecoins aren't complementary to Bitcoin in any way, shape or form but they actually undermine the reason for Bitcoin's existence by keeping the Federal Reserve cartel firmly in charge of money issuance!
This is the contradiction I cannot reconcile when people cheer about moving USDT/USDC. What on earth are you smoking? Are we supposed to celebrate the fact that the very monetary system Bitcoin was designed to obsolete can now use Bitcoin's infrastructure to become faster, cheaper and more globally accessible? Bitcoin adoption and stablecoin adoption are not the same thing. Using Bitcoin as a routing network for the fiat currencies it was created to destroy makes absolutely zero sense.
Bitcoinising fiat does not make it honest money. It does not stop the theft of your time and wealth via inflation, neither does it take the government out of your money. A dollar sent over Lightning is still a dollar. Putting a centralized financial instrument onto decentralized infrastructure does not magically transfer Bitcoin's monetary properties to that instrument.
Then there's RGB, the protocol enabling all this, engineered to issue assets on Bitcoin while keeping the heavy data off-chain so the base layer stays lean. Elegant engineering driven by catastrophic incentives. Companies like Utexo are excited to use RGB to bring USDT to Bitcoin but what they seem to forget is that the moment you start playing with asset issuance, you invite regulators like the SEC to point another gun at your head, where you will be forced to comply with KYC or else.
The entire stablecoin industry is a parasitic rent-seeking layer masquerading as Bitcoiners. Tether profits from float and opacity, while Circle sells regulatory compliance. They both promise stability while expanding the dollar’s monetary colonialism. In reality they are not a bridge to Bitcoin; but they are a bridge back to the Fed. They are the fiat system’s final form; programmable, global, public-private partnership.
Privately issued CBDCs to be more precise. The stablecoin industry doesn’t want sound money but instead it wants a captive market of people who need dollars but cannot access banks, and they sell them a digital leash disguised as freedom. Bitcoin was supposed to separate money from State while stablecoins risk do the exact opposite by bringing politically regulated fiat liabilities into Bitcoin's ecosystem and normalizing the toxic idea that Bitcoin's greatest contribution is making centralized money more efficient.
So when Paolo tells us that USDT is “coming home” to Bitcoin, perhaps we should ask whether USDT is really coming home or whether we are inviting the dollar into the house Bitcoin was built to escape. Bitcoinizing the dollar doesn't Bitcoinize anything. It doesn't stop the inflation tax, doesn't remove government from your money, and doesn't make fiat honest.