In cryptocurrency, most avid traders prefer having an option for stability to trade out of their volatile holdings while still maintaining decentralized assets that avoid the need to exchange into Fiat currency. We traders sometimes need a period of rest for our crypto portfolios to not have the potential to significantly increase or decrease in value. This is exactly what the appropriately named stablecoins allow us to accomplish.
These crypto tokens are designed to peg their values closely to the value of various currencies, such as the ever popular dollar, at an approximate 1:1 ratio. By doing so, cryptocurrency traders on exchanges and algorithmic platforms like Level are able to use them as a means of exchange in order to essentially liquidate their other volatile cryptocurrencies. Doing so negates the risk of major price fluctuations in their portfolios.
The availability of stablecoins is still just three and a half years old, and the power that they hold are entirely up to the markets. But, According to Phil Glazer at Bitwise Asset Management, he believes that as time goes on, a successful cryptocurrency that has a fixed price relative to our main Fiat currencies will have a major positive effect on cryptocurrency as a whole. He states,
“A fixed price cryptocurrency would enable a greater number of use cases than current cryptocurrencies allow. At the moment, cryptocurrencies are primarily held by investors and speculators seeking to profit from price appreciation. Few people hold and use cryptocurrencies like they would US dollars (receiving a salary, paying for groceries, etc.) because prices fluctuate significantly day-to-day.”
In the current landscape of cryptocurrency exchanges, only a select number of cryptoassets can be exchanged for currently tradeable stablecoins. Trading pairs involving stablecoins are some of the most heavily exchanged. In fact, the combination of trading USDT (aka Tether, which I’ll talk about more later in this piece) for Bitcoin is currently the most popular trading pair among exchanges where this pair is offered.
Why is USDT so highly exchanged when its value intentionally doesn’t garner a profit or loss? Well, stablecoins are, by design, not the roller coaster ride in value the way most other cryptocurrencies are, and that is precisely what gives them appeal. If you are riding recent highs in Bitcoin and decide it’s time to sell off a portion of them temporarily, Tether allows you to do so at Bitcoin’s market price. If BTC loses 15% of its value relative to the dollar the following day, your holdings that were converted to Tether did not actually lose any value.
Tether and other stablecoins allow you to essentially “sit out” from the market highs and lows any time you please, and be comfortable knowing those coins do not change in value relative to the dollar.
The existence of stablecoins on exchanges allows traders to cycle in and out of positions in Bitcoin and other volatile coins with ease while keeping their holdings out of the centralized bank systems. Swapping heavily volatile coins like Bitcoin for the least volatile coins available (stablecoins) on an exchange any time the trader so chooses is a huge advantage for anyone looking to de-risk and protect their portfolio values for any given timeframe. Investors and traders need stability in their own holdings on and off in order to counter the large spikes in crypto market volatility that occurs on both short-term and long-term time scales. They also need a quick way to exit and enter their positions when major news occurs and prices may react at a moment’s notice.
But why can’t we simply convert any of our cryptocurrency holdings to actual US dollars at the drop of a hat? Why do we even need a specialized stable token designed to replicate the true value of the US dollar around the clock? We already have something that is easily used for exchanging goods and services, both in person and on the internet. It’s called the dollar. And additionally, traditional stocks and equities can be bought and sold using USD in just about every online brokerage out there. However, there are a couple reasons that stablecoins are alternatively offered by most exchanges:
The often notorious and polarizing Tether coin (USDT) has been around and circulated through cryptocurrency exchanges and wallets around the globe since early 2016. The questionable aspect to the world’s currently most traded stablecoin lies with their concerningly underwhelming track record regarding their transparency of their fund backing. The coin’s team claims that each USDT coin is backed by a dollar of hard currency reserves. However, only grainy, highly questioned evidence has been provided to disprove the notion that they do not have all of their tokens backed by real dollars. Bringing forth evidence of hard USD currency backing through periodic audits of the company would alleviate concerns and instill confidence in traders’ minds.
Frequent inquiries for proof of this claim have been met with mostly radio silence from the Tether team. As of June 1, 2018, the stablecoin had a market cap of an astonishing $2.55 billion. Shortly after this date, a transparency report was released with the backing of law firm Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan LLP that unofficially stated that their investigation found Tether to have the fund backing they claimed. The company was supposedly investigated by the law firm without warning, and it was announced that Tether’s bank account records exceeded its June 1st market cap by $7 million, thus indicating that it has full backing of its market supply of tokens. However, the vagueness and lack of many specific details of this report only temporarily silenced critics.
A week prior to the time of this writing, Bloomberg conducted an investigative report that heavily questioned Tether’s transparency report. In it, they noted that the popular cryptocurrency exchange, Kraken, has been the host to numerous suspicious Tether trades, many of which are indicative signs of blatant market manipulation. Wash trading and very specific trade amounts have been triggered and met with almost no temporary price movements in the overall value of Tether. It is unclear whether there are people associated with Tether or the exchange who have anything to do with these market manipulation tactics, but it seems as though Tether at least would have knowledge of these trades based on the lack of price movement to numbers that would normally move the value of their coin considerably.
Wash trading is the act of both buying and selling a coin simultaneously in order to mislead traders into assuming false information about a specific coin or entire market. Many suspect that these peculiar trades have occurred on the exchange without proper price movement. As a result of these scandals and several others involving the largest stablecoin, red flags are up, and Tether remains controversial as a legitimate stablecoin.
Yes, as I stated earlier in this article, stablecoins are designed to not have significant price movement. However, several who have looked into the matter have conclouded that these significant trades should be at least temporarily moving the price of Tether to around $1.10, which would cause Tether to issue more coins into circulation and inevitably bring their value back to the intended $1.00. Instead, the price has only seemed to range from approximately $0.99 to $1.01, causing analysts to question if these orders are actually real or just showing up in order books to create false impressions of heavy market demand.
In addition, the Bloomberg report referenced a passage by University of Texas professor John Griffin, who said that there are some very specific orders that are “suggestive of wash trading”.
On top of all the confusion surrounding this so-called transparency report and the abundance of polarizing opinions it received, there had already been a $33 million hack of Tether coins in November, 2017. This opened doors to questions regarding the safety, vulnerabilities, and susceptibility to future security breaches of a coin that ironically is intended to instill a sense of calm in surrounding heavily fluctuating markets.
Despite the lack of fund backed evidence, which would be a major concern in virtually any other investable sector in the world, Tether is still a highly owned token constantly being exchanged throughout the cryptocurrency world. Not only that, but many are unaware that US Tether (USDT) is currently the second most traded cryptocurrency behind only Bitcoin. Stablecoins can also be used as helpful market indicators regarding the overall sentiment of the market based on how they are being traded. According to Joseph Young, an analyst at News BTC,
“The daily trading volume of USDT can be considered as a direct representation of the volatility in the cryptocurrency market; if the volume of Tether is abnormally large in a downward trend, it signifies that traders are selling cryptocurrencies to USDT, and if the volume of Tether is unusually large in a bull market, it demonstrates that traders are selling their USDT reserves to acquire more cryptocurrencies.”
Lately, many exchanges have been following Coinbase’s footsteps and slowly implementing USD trading for top traded coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum. But trading into centralized Fiat currencies is not exactly a great option if you are a believer in decentralized currency as the future. These fiat-pegged stablecoins I will be listing below are intended to be a convenience for users to exchange, not a burden that traders should feel forced into as an alternative to US dollars. There are three main types of stablecoins that currently are available for traders to get their hands on:
In addition to the several tokens I have named, there are also several other stablecoins that are expected to be made readily available for cryptocurrency traders in the near future, including Kowala, Augmint, and Carbon. With several existing, emerging, and soon to be planned options in the stablecoin landscape, traders and investors have some options moving forward in how to prevent portions of their crypto portfolios from violently fluctuating. If stablecoins are able to accomplish what is expected and required of them (maintaining stability in an extremely volatile sector) without doubts in their validity, their existence will be a major boon for cryptocurrency.
Mass adoption of crypto in general will be an extreme uphill battle without these safe, reliable stablecoins for traders to buy and sell in and out of when waters get choppy. The currency-pegged tokens will open wide doors for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other top coins if they are able to scale to a global audience. Chrisjan Pauw, an author at Cointelegraph, states,
“For truly decentralized stablecoins to work, there must also be a system in place that can reliably obtain the exchange rate between the stablecoin and the pegged asset, without leaning on third-party institutions that can be manipulated.”
This is precisely what we need from a stablecoin to lift up all of cryptocurrency, and we will see in the months and years to come how well these coins can execute the goals that they set out to accomplish.
I write in depth cryptocurrency analysis at Level, the passive investing tool for crypto. See what we’re doing at Lvl.co and see our other analysis at our magazine. If you love what you see, give this article 50 claps! If you hate it, show your displeasure with 49.
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