With the way inflation and bank charges are eating into people’s money, some Nigerians are now keeping their savings in stablecoins instead of bank accounts. Unlike Bitcoin, USDT doesn’t rise or fall much, it just mirrors the dollar, so it protects against naira depreciation. But then questions come up, can stablecoins really replace the role of banks? What about safety, regulations, and accessibility when someone needs cash quickly?
The funny thing is that USDT is not even stable as you think, if anything happens to US economy USDT will depreciate. Even if you keep your money as USD, or you eat earning in dollars, the moment you convert your USDT to naira you will understand that things have increased because of inflation. People that earn in dollar are very happy but they do not know that what #50,000k can buy when naira was valuable, now that it's no longer valuable that same #50,000k can no longer afford it.
Most persons do not understand the dynamic of the USDT and so they just want to presume that they just think that because it is a way of saving in dollars its just the best without having to consider that there are some merits and demerits of holding the USDT as a way of saving. just like Naira, there are times when rates does crash and that affects the value of USDT so it is not always guaranteed that you are going to get an absolute value increase for the money you saved in USDT, you only get the advantage of a slight increase in the face of inflation and it is mostly not above 5%-8% because no country would want to allow their economy suffer such level of inflation just at a go although cumulatively it can go beyond that but not at a go.