Quote from: icalical on June 03, 2018, 09:28:02 PM

I don't think we need an alternative for tether. First thing firet if you don't have unique aspect that differentiate your project from tether, than your project is not necessary. Second, more exchange are offering direct real fiat exchange, and soon all exchange will do the same, and stable coins like tether will be left.

I agree that more exchanges will offer direct fiat exchange over time. But it will not be anytime soon because the regulations are very complex.

In the meantime, there absolutely is a need for an alternative because Tether simply does not have the $USD on deposit. They are about to fall apart any day because the CFTC IS investigating them: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-24/bitfinex-said-to-find-bank-in-puerto-rico-after-wells-fargo-exit

A very key phrase here: "The regulator is investigating whether Tethers $2.1 billion in customer money backing its virtual coin is really there, a person familiar with the matter said in January."

What will happen soon is that Tether will fall apart and be worth $0. However I do not think at all this will cause the price of BTC to fall. While it's true that upwards pressure on BTC price may have been due to fake Tether's buying, unless someone is buying BTC ON MARGIN with Tether, the fact that your Tether holdings go to 0 does not really affect BTC price, in fact people will have to put whatever amount of Tether they are selling into something, and it will most likely be into BTC. There certainly may be a temporary FUD scare and a drop also, but no one will be selling BTC long term just because of Tether.

Why is a cryptocurrency backed by $USD important? Simply because you can make fast, virtually free transactions to anyone in the world. Normal $USD payments are slow, expensive and full of unncessary regulations (banks routinely shut down accounts that send a lot of wires in or out, even if it's a fully legitimate business collecting customer money and paying vendors). Cryptocurrency eliminates all that but no one can do real business in BTC right now, so the need for a stablecoin crypto is clearly there.

Sometimes people say "Oh your project needs to revolutionize the world. I think that's completely false. It just needs to be doing something better, simpler, faster and/or cheaper.