And yeah, it relies on centralized trust for issuance, so it's hard to call it a "coin" in the same way bitcoin is, but I do believe it solves real problems.

There's a lot you can do with a collateralized-cryptographic-asset-on-a-distributed-ledger (or stablecoin) that you can't do with a bank account. For one thing, you can write your own wallet app that works however you want it. That would be like if all banks implemented the same standard, and you could use any app to control your accounts.

You can use it to do some interesting things, like write apps that require two-to-sign for certain types of transactions, or write a generic two-factor auth that works with any of these apps. You could write an arbitration service for settling disputes, or do actual (less than 10 cents) micro-transactions since the processing fees are fractions of a cent.

There's a lot of potential from letting programmers interact with the finance system more concretely, and that's the problem at least some of these stablecoins are trying to solve. Not Gemini, but over on the stellar network that's what we're working on.

https://github.com/jpantunes/awesome-cryptoeconomics#stablec...

That being said, there's a big difference between a pegged currency and an algorithmic stablecoin like the DAI or Bancor.

No, but it is allegedly profitable!

Ironic that you would quote that article yet completely ignore its meaning in the rest of your comment?

Stablecoins are a superset of centralized voucher tokens like Tether.

Research into trustless price-stable cryptocurrencies is an ongoing effort, which realization will have a huge impact on the crypto ecosystem.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18287231

Price stability is as big a barrier to adoption as speed and end-user experience are. Discrediting or wilfully misleading the public on that point is harmful to the field as a whole.