Can I buy a pizza with it or pay my bills with it? Can my employer pay me in it? Or is it just an “emperor’s new clothes” thing? I just don’t see the tangible value in it. Rhetorical questions, BTW, I know you can’t buy a pizza with it, at least outside of some edge cases that I’m not aware of.

I thought what made money money was everyone agreed it was valuable and was willing to exchange it for goods and services directly. I don’t see that with crypto.

  • [deleted]@piefed.worldEnglish
    18·
    2 days ago

    A currency backed by a government has a very high chance of being able to be used at any time with a mostly stable value. Sure, if the government collapses it can become worthless, but on a worldwide scale that is far, far less likely and you will most likely know if it is headed that way ahead of time.

    Governments add a bit of stability for currency used as currency and not as speculation.

    • dhork@lemmy.worldEnglish
      32·
      1 day ago

      Tether is an interesting experiment here. They are traded as smart contract tokens on top of various blockchains. They don’t really have any intrinsic value, other than Tether LTD saying “every Tether is 100% backed by currency reserves”, and releasing unsatisfactory “audits” now and then. It’s main utility is that it provides foreign exchanges with a way to trade in something that is like Dollars without opening them up to the regulation that comes with trading actual dollars. It’s market cap is currently in excess of $180 B.

      But, USDT has been around, in one form or another, since 2015. And while other “innovative” crypto products have crashed and burned, Tether has been able to keep its peg and has never failed to meet redemptions. Furthermore, it doesn’t need to be a scam. It’s whole point is to always be worth one currency unit, so all they have to do is invest that currency in safe conventional investments and they can literally make billions of dollars with very little overhead. The most obvious answer is that they are not a scam.

      I still don’t really trust them, but I have used them on exchanges, always making sure to trade through Tether to something I can redeem on a US exchange for actual dollars. But, I have to acknowledge they have lasted longer the most crypto entities. I wish they would get a complete audit together, but at some point their reputation for having lasted so long needs to be worth something?