Rise of Stablecoins
Well, that is just a terrible title, because Stablecoins have already risen. For those who are still new to crypto, here is the definition:
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that attempt to peg their market value to some external reference
Typically the most common reference is? Yeah, you guessed it right, it is USD. You may hate it, the entire crypto revolution started with the hate of USD, but ironically, it is the USD that is still the benchmark. Simply because, that is the easiest way to express the value of something that most people in the world will understand. This is a fact, and it is undeniable.
These are some of the top Stablecoins. There is a good summary of them at Binance Academy. The main idea of inception and the need of stablecoin is their 'stability'. For example, BTC may be more of an asset, LTC maybe better for transaction, ETH maybe better for 'projects'; but they are all volatile. The problem with volatility is that it makes it nearly impossible to do day-to-day transactions or looking for stability. If you are a seller or buyer of goods or services, by the time, anyone decides to buy/sell, and actually do the transaction, prices can move significantly. This is one of the major downside in conventional cryptocurrency which makes it largely impractical as the main and only element of a transaction. Stablecoins solve that problem (as most of the popular ones are pegged to $1). Below are the top stablecoins. The current marketcap of the total stablecoin market is $187 Billion Dollars as per Coinmarketcap!
Stablecoin in Hive Ecosystem (HBD)
Of course, we can say, we have the HBD. Ranked at #5000 + at the time of this writing we can fairly say, it maybe very important to us, but the outside world doesn't care.
Don't get me wrong, I am well aware of recent improvement of giving 20% return on HBD savings by most of the top witness (although a few a still signalling less, please consider joining the crowd gentlemen!). There certainly have been some internal excitement by a few common hivers to stash some HBD. There is also some liquidity pool like pHBD by folks at Leofinance (although I am yet to understand the concept, and honestly skeptical). However, so the the effect is muted. This is a chicken-and-egg problem. We know that HBD is good and practical, but since it doesn't really trade at most exchanges, the rest of the world don't care about it. Until we change that, and change the liquidity, as well as incentive, I don't see the status of HBD is changing.
It reminds me of the famous Moneyball quote by coach Billy Beane:
“The problem we’re trying to solve is that there are rich teams and there are poor teams. Then there’s fifty feet of crap, and then there’s us. It’s an unfair game.
If we want to succeed, we must play some kind of "moneyball", that is all that I am saying.