On: Mastercard and visa are the de facto regulators of...

[TimJRobinson]

Stablecoins on crypto rails are the much more likely solution. There's networks like Polygon Nightfall or Aztec Network that are private, cheap, secured by Ethereum, and allow sending stablecoins (so any fiat currency).

I can imagine these being integrated everywhere in the future. Stripe has started to get into Ethereum connectivity lately to make it easy to add them to any website. Many other payment providers and websites will follow because it's permissionless.

[cowtools → TimJRobinson]

I think stablecoins are fundamentally a centralized technology. It betrays the purpose of cryptocurrency in the first place if there's a single point of failure that can be regulated to hell.

[Sargos → cowtools]

There are lots of stablecoins of all different types. You are probably thinking of Tether or USDC which are companies and can be regulated/shut down but there are also stablecoins like DAI which are decentralized and cannot be shut down.

I imagine most people would just use DAI on Aztec when buying porn or drugs.

[cowtools → Sargos]

From what I understand, stablecoins generally fall into two categories:

1. Relies on some central entity to buy/sell it as to peg/back it to another asset.

2. Relies on some central observer to sign exchange rates so that the system can automatically adjust its reward system.