On Stablecoins and Tuesday Links 02/20/18

The week is off to a big start at Uncrypt! We kicked it off by recording our first ever podcast in Brooklyn and it looks like we’ve got the itch, with more time booked to continue recording Sunset Crypto.

Our first episode will be posted shortly, but in the meantime I got to thinking about some of the content Will O’Leary and I laid down the other night. You’ll have to give it a listen (shameless plug), but we gave some conversational attention to Bitfinex and Tether, the theme of the discussed focused around there being “lots of smoke but no fire.” Somewhere along the discussion it was mutually agreed that the idea of a stablecoin, what Tether is (or claims to be), makes a lot of sense and is certainly a need in the crypto space. The concept of a stable coin is an important one because it is the door-opener to merchant adoption of cryptocurrency, crypto-wages and a host of financial services built on top of decentralized protocols.

Recently, the discussion around stablecoins has centered around Bitfinex/Tether, but that does no justice to the importance of the concept. Linked here is an excellent and detailed overview of stablecoins: the origins of the concept, the application in crypto and a comparative analysis of the concepts and projects currently in the space.

Speaking of excellent and detailed overviews, here is one I’ve seen circulating all over crypto-twitter, but it’s worth reposting here to make sure it gets exposure. Great article on the value of decentralization, including great examples of successful decentralized projects pre-crypto.

The story of taxation on crypto is only beginning internationally. Here in the U.S.A., on the state level, the traditionally anti-Federal Reserve state of Wyoming is considering potentially groundbreaking tax legislation. Bravo.

And on the other side of the spectrum, Israeli Tax Authorities reaffirm cryptocurrency as an asset class.