1/21 Don't fear it, secure it.

A thread on creating a secure #Bitcoin backup with the Hodlr Disks from @hodlrswiss.

If you value permissionless money & the ability to transact without being censored then self-custody & get your bitcoin out of third party control.

Some thoughts on this super inaccurate piece.

tl;dr: this is not a defence of Tether/ iFinex, who I would like nothing more than to see disappear into irrelevance. However, most of the conclusions here show zero understanding of crypto market

1. First up: it’s completely inexcusable that Tether refuse to have a 3rd party audit. I can’t find a single good faith reason for this.

Bitfinex GC recently did a superb job of sidestepping that question on WBD:

2. For better or worse, USDT (tether) started as a way for people to move fiat between exchanges (a major problem) in the absence of the ability to onboard banking partners, none of whom wanted to touch crypto. USDT is now the dominant stablecoin by mkt cap & liquidity.

3. As a result of the difficulty of having a fiat on/off rail, many exchanges, like Binance, chose to be ‘crypto only’, using stablecoins in lieu of fiat. This is why the majority of inflows into BTC (article says 70%) is via USDT

4. Unbanked exchanges are in aggregate larger than banked ones. This is true, but it’s not because of a giant conspiracy to steal your BTC. Being unbanked = real regulatory arbitrages (lower cost + ability to innovate fast), and lower barriers to entry means there’s more of them.

@VentureCoinist @HypeBillion @MycolePawket If the whole world settled on one stablecoin, I'd agree with you. But stablecoins are always going to be tied to jurisdictions and counter-parties too. So it is unlikely one winner will emerge.

@HypeBillion @MycolePawket Today, one of the roles of the dollar is acting as an intermediary or bridge between currencies. For that role, its tie to the US jurisdiction is both an advantage and a disadvantage. Better US than a worse jurisdiction, but a pure digital asset is better still.

@HypeBillion @MycolePawket Imagine a future (maybe not so far off) where everything is tokenized and you can have your salary agreed in dollars but gold gets delivered to your wallet and you can buy groceries by selling tokenized shares of a REIT.

@HypeBillion @MycolePawket In that world, there will need to be concentrations of liquidity. You can't go from gold to shares of an obscure REIT by finding people who want to go those same shares to gold. The liquidity-concentrating asset likely can't be one country's currency. How could that be universal?

@HypeBillion @MycolePawket So, sure, if you get paid in dollars and pay your bills in dollars, it may make sense for you to use a dollar-denominated stablecoin for short-term holdings and payments. Absolutely.

Hodling #Bitcoin as a Company is not easy, over the past year it felt like we were battling an opposing public opinion in our community all the time.
This was resolved by us learning & studying which was crucial
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Thread 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽

2/ The arguments were exhausting especially if you didn't put time into education
1. Too volatile
2. Untrustworthy
3. Will get banned
4. Consumes too much energy
5. Not an investment, its speculation
6. Manipulated market
7. CBDC's
8. Used by criminals

3/ We saw something different, #Bitcoin was the most stable asset in our lives. Block after block it operated with perfection as promised. #Bitcoin hasn't changed at all since we got into it (yes, we verified) but the echo system built on top of it grew immensely

4/ Meanwhile everything else around us was insanely volatile, Our Central Bank printed more money than was ever printed in the country's history. Prices of real estate, commodities, groceries shot through the roof, more importantly the prices of Chicken

5/ Our business is built on the back of fresh high quality Chicken which increased in price by >25%
Nassim Taleb came out on @CNBC and suggested that owning a business should be sufficient to protect you from inflation because you can raise prices,