The folks on Hacker News seem pretty anti-crypto, but I feel like they're missing the point. If we're actually looking for ways to fix the US debt, stablecoins are definitely worth considering
It’s a hilarious definition of “fix” but the basic argument is that when you mandate stablecoins to hold treasuries and they start seeing actual adoption, you create demand/sink for a couple extra trillion dollars of treasury bonds.
Eg if Australian locals suddenly switch transacting cocaine at scale in Tether instead of AUD, the US government can borrow more money by providing that collateral to Tether.
In this scenario, what happens when there’s a run on a stablecoin?
The bonds are sold en masse, and the value of those bonds will be hit, driving up gov borrowing costs (plus they just lost a source of demand), meaning the stablecoin “bank” could be bankrupt, right?
With stable coins you’re really trusting a private company to invest your money in a way that is robust to a drop in confidence. Isn’t this high risk? If a coin gets large enough, is it a threat to government solvency?
I’m sure the current administration will put prudent oversight in place for that not to happen.
But I guess we will find out in a 2027 Bessent presser announcing the Fed stepping in.
More serious answer: the bigger risk is trusting SV types to be content with a couple of percent in spread, and not starting to pull all kind of shenanigans to juice returns to a point where it becomes much harder to bail them out vs just taking back the treasuries.
US government solvency seems, as crazy as it sounds, less of an issue, as evidenced by the brief tantrums with absolutely no real effects beyond a couple of protesting headlines in the recent months. Where else are people around the world going to put their money? But as gifted as the current gov crew is at turning privilege into disaster, we're probably going to find out soon enough if there are any actual limits to that.
Normally not too much sympathy for the 7 or so 'sober' ECB folks, but I do not envy them for having to endure their hyped up CBDC colleagues at Robert Johnson at 3am…
Thank you for providing an actual answer! I don't know what to think of it--it seems naïve to say the least. But it is at least a self-consistent answer that helps me better understand what people mean when they say stuff like that.
Stablecoin companies back their coins with U.S. Treasury bonds, mostly short-term ones instead of 10 or 30-year bonds. So, when you hold a stablecoin, you're essentially helping the U.S. government kick the can down the road a bit more.
