MoneyWeek

Stablecoins: the future of money

When most investors think about cryptocurrencies, bitcoin is still almost certainly the first asset that springs to mind. And one thing most people associate with bitcoin is its volatility.

Yet one corner of the crypto market, which is becoming increasingly important and visible (if not always for the right reasons) aims to have precisely the opposite characteristic – stability.

From as early as 2013, banks were blocking law-abiding citizens from interacting with cryptocurrency exchanges. That made buying and selling bitcoin difficult. So the crypto industry simply took the banks out of the equation and replaced them with “stablecoins”. Put simply, a stablecoin is a dollar that lives on a blockchain.

A $1 stablecoin is worth $1, it’s as simple as that. It can be traded easily for volatile assets such as bitcoin and ether. But it also offers crypto investors the opportunity to sit on the sidelines

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