Only if the other major world currencies take active (and successful) steps against stablecoins being backed by them.

If they don't, stablecoins would presumably make it even easier to convert holdings into stablecoins backed by another currency (as there is no new account to be opened etc.) as soon as the sentiment on a given world currency shifts.

According to your argument and the article of this post, there should already be prominent stablecoins backed by other currencies. Yet there is not such thing AFAIK. Reason is simple. USD is the common denominator for people the world over. Almost everyone know what a dollar is, and that is reflected in the dominance of USDT and USDC. And since this is a relatively recent phenomenon, it goes counter to the narrative of the decline of the US Dollar.

> USD is the common denominator for people the world over.

Yes, currently. This article is about a hypothetical in which this stops being the case. My argument is that stablecoins would not stop such a trend, and could possibly accelerate it.

I understand the hypothetical trend being mentioned, and I would even agree with it in absence of stablecoins. See, today, if China & Russia want to trade, they may trade in Ruble or Yuan. Ruble or Yuan don't have to be universally accepted for them to trade. But if I am transacting in stablecoin, I don't want to use anything that is not universally accepted from the get-go. Otherwise, I might as well use Ruble or Yuan. So, even if in theory the stablecoin could be backed by any currency, I am not going to use just any stablecoin, only the one most widely accepted.

In other words, I think Stablecoin is winner-take-all, and USD has already won.

> I am not going to use just any stablecoin, only the one most widely accepted.

But why?

Due to the existence of decentralized exchanges, all stablecoins are effectively equally widely accepted. Some blockchains even make it fully transparent by handling foreign exchange in the background for every payment where it's required, and for the ones that don't, most common wallets provide a "swap" feature directly in their UI.

Given that, why would people not hold the one that preserves their purchasing power best and that they have most trust in?

RE: why would people not hold the one that preserves their purchasing power best and that they have most trust in?

That is exactly what they are doing right now - USD.

But for arguments sake, what is the emerging alternative?

Bitcoin becoming the world reserve currency does not necessarily imply it also becoming the primary payment currency, nor would it somehow imply fully reserved banking.

Satoshi would probably shudder at the thought of Bitcoin-backed fractional reserve currencies, but that's about the only thing he could do about it.

> What does it take to go from bitcoin being measured in US dollars to US dollars being measured in bitcoin.

Just for Bitcoin to no longer be deflationary. Right now it's much too good a store of value to become an effective medium of exchange.

Or even more dramatically, imagine C compilers were written in C :)

I only got half a sentence into "well-actually"ing you before I got the joke.

Wow, really? That's frustrating.

I'd have expected it to actually make the purchase using my card on file with my Amazon account, just like the physical Kindle does.

That one Apple is still allowed to collect fees on (which I'd love to see the provided justification for!).

Per the article: "Apple can no longer collect a 27 percent commission on purchases made outside of apps or restrict how developers can direct users to alternate payment options"

This now allows folks to direct users to alternate methods. Before this the Kindle app would just say something along the lines of "you can't get a book here, please use the website".

As far as I understand, what "reader apps" were allowed to do was to display content purchased elsewhere in the first place, which is orthogonal to being/not being allowed to link to external purchases, no?

These are the changes that Apple was forced to make, specifically referencing 3.1.3 (Other Purchase Methods) and 3.1.3(a) (“Reader” Apps):

> 3.1.3: The prohibition on encouraging users to use a purchasing method other than in-app purchase does not apply on the United States storefront.

> 3.1.3(a): The External Link Account entitlement is not required for apps on the United States storefront to include buttons, external links, or other calls to action.

The bit about the (formerly required in the US) entitlement is:

> Reader app developers may apply for the External Link Account Entitlement to provide an informational link in their app to a web site the developer owns or maintains responsibility for in order to create or manage an account.

They required you use a trackingless, generic URL that was unvarying per user, so you probably didn't run into it super often. Offhand, the Kobo app did use it.

Amazing!

Now if Amazon could also fix the incredibly frustrating, long-standing bug of their iOS app where tapping the screen anywhere does not turn pages, but instead toggles through "page numbers" -> "time left in chapter" -> "time left in book" etc., I'd be happy with it.

Anywhere?

I've never seen that bug. Now, if you tap it near the bottom on the left-hand side, it toggles through that, by design (just as it does on the Kindle tablets)...

Anywhere for me, but only about 1 out of 10 taps or so.

Drives me crazy, and I only swipe to turn pages at this point, which prevents it, but is somewhat uncomfortable.

What a sad ending for both a once amazing pioneer of P2P technology and a great brand and product. Thanks for nothing, Microsoft.

Google Voice is amazing, but requires a US phone number to set up.

I wonder if an American friend could set it up for me. My gmail mailbox but their US phone number. (Thanks for the recommendation!)

It should, but they've recently been somewhat picky about which phone numbers they accept for the initial setup.

Once you get it, you don't need access to that US number afterwards – very useful when traveling; everything just works via VoIP, including texting, which is a lifesaver for 2FA when traveling without US roaming.

Of course, it's a Google service, so expect it to be discontinued without warning at the exact moment you've totally integrated it into your daily life.

Almost all my calls these days are via OTT VoIP (FaceTime, WhatsApp, Zoom etc.), and I really can't say I notice much of a qualitative difference to old PCM lines – if anything, the opposite is the case; wideband voice makes longer phone calls much more bearable.

And that's over unprioritized 5G/LTE and Wi-Fi. Properly prioritized VoIP, such as the one used in VoLTE and NGN networks, should have even better jitter and latency characteristics.

I mean.... when was the last time you made a call that was full analog/PRI? Did you notice that cell phones had higher latency than landlines?

30-40 ms latency is probably the lower bound on a VoIP call [1]; most calls will be a lot more. But you might not notice it if that's all you have access to, or if all of your calls are long distance that it would never be good anyway. On long distance, you probably have a better transmission delay now over internet than you would have had over telephone networks, as cable routes have improved and routing is often more direct; that will probably offset some of the packetization delay.

[1] You can do better, but it involves having great connectivity and sending lots of very small packets, and mainstream calling isn't willing to send 200 packets per second of 5 ms of samples when most people don't notice/complain about the latency when sending 50 packets per second with 20 ms of samples.

> when was the last time you made a call that was full analog/PRI?

Probably 15-20 years ago? That would have most likely been over DECT, though, which adds 10 or so ms by itself (our wired landline phone was in a slightly awkward location :)

> Did you notice that cell phones had higher latency than landlines?

Compared to landlines, the most noticeable aspect of GSM wasn't the latency (unless the person on the other line was right next to me, in which case there was an echo), but rather the absolute potato quality compared to both G.711 landlines and modern VoIP codecs.

> mainstream calling isn't willing to send 200 packets per second of 5 ms of samples

Yeah, that would probably be too much overhead for most applications. But now you got me wondering: Do video calls have lower latency audio (assuming the codec can do better than 20ms in the first place), given that there's probably much more data available to send at any given time?

> Do video calls have lower latency audio (assuming the codec can do better than 20ms in the first place), given that there's probably much more data available to send at any given time?

At least for WebRTC, no. The audio and video streams are separate, there's no mechanism in WebRTC to piggyback audio onto video packets. If the receiver is synchronizing audio with video, there's potential for additional delay (but when A/V sync works, it's probably worth it)

I don't know details about WhatsApp calling (although I worked there, I didn't touch the realtime calling stack), I think it does use RTP which isn't really built around piggybacking, but since it's a closed service, they can do whatever. No idea about Apple's calling either.