University of Berkeley Professor Barry Eichengreen has taken a swipe at the viability of stablecoins in an op-ed published on Project Syndicate. The critique, entitled “The Stable-Coin Myth,” argues stablecoins are not automatically "viable" just because they are pegged to an asset, though Eichengreen does believe they have an advantage over "conventional cryptocurrencies" such as bitcoin which he says "is highly unstable" and "unattractive as units of account."“Stable coins purport to solve these problems. Because their value is stable in terms of dollars or their equivalent, they are attractive as units of account and stores of value. They are not mere vehicles for financial speculation. But this doesn’t mean that they are viable," he writes.Stablecoins are digital tokens intended to retain a stable value, usually one pegged to a traditional currency like the dollar or euro. Typically, they are backed by a fiat currency or other assets, though this is not always the case. Citing Tether (USDT) in its U.S. context, Eichengreen believes that fully collateralized stablecoins won’t gain traction because it would mean trading in a currency that is “supported by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government, for a cryptocurrency with questionable backing that is awkward to use.” To him, “it is not obvious that the model will scale, or that governments will let it.”Since its launch in 2014, USDT has been t...
