Agree re. prediction markets and predatory marketing but disagree so hard with this
> The private interest is genuine, a global market's appetite for a frictionless way to hold dollars, captured by the saver who holds the token and the issuer who books the reserves. The cost is paid by everyone outside that transaction. What looks rational for the individual Nigerian saver is corrosive for Nigeria.
The way this is framed by the author is something like "poor $COUNTRY central bank has its citizens best interests at heart but evil stablecoins are tying the poor central bank's hands". The reality could not be farther from truth. In countries mentioned in the article like Argentina, Turkey or Nigeria the governments are incredibly corrupt and they use monetary policy and capital controls to make loads of cheap financing available to the ultra rich while inflating their debts away. The net effect is that in these countries the combination of inflation and currency debasement is used as a direct wealth siphon from the middle/upper middle class to the ultra rich (the poor have no savings and therefore are less affected). As a result the middle and upper middle classes of these countries entirely evaporated in the last 10-15 years.
Stablecoins are not the issue here, the governments are.
That's not the framing:
> The private interest is genuine, [...] rational for the individual Nigerian saver
You expand upon that rationale. It is individually rational precisely because of corruption, incompetence, external sanctions and many other situations across the world.
This choice is corrosive for Nigeria regardless of whether the Nigerian government is benevolent or malevolent because American monetary policy is ignorant of what would be beneficial for Nigeria and the more people that make that choice the more the future of their society is tied to American monetary policy. It is an incompetent policy by construction. Now you have two problems: corruption, and an inability to effect monetary policy.
You might think, well if and when we solve the corruption problem we can transfer the stable coin back to effect a monetary policy... triggering the run that will drop the peg because the private entities backing the coin aren't regulated like a bank. Although comically, maybe the American taxpayer will then bail out the entity and the Nigerians will get their money!
I wholeheartedly agree with your comment. Stablecoins are not the problem, they are a symptom. I'm from Venezuela, the country that keeps leading in inflation. Our options are holding a currency that loses half its value in months, buying dollars in the "black market" which is illegal or using stablecoins.
I hate these type of articles because they often come from people that live in a normal country and don't know the struggle to live in a corrupt shithole where you don't have financial freedom nor security
I don't see why those two positions are mutually exclusive?