Exclusive: Tether and private transactions are coming to Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
Roger Ver reveals the $4 billion stablecoin network is coming to the Bitcoin Cash blockchain in an exclusive interview with Crypto Finder.
In an apparent revamp of Bitcoin Cash's (BCH) token ecosystem, Roger Ver has revealed that the world-leading stablecoin provider Tether, known primarily for its US dollar stablecoin (USDT), is coming to the Bitcoin Cash blockchain.
Tokenisation on BCH is enabled by the Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP), which was released two years ago, but failed to compete with other token networks like Ethereum. Ver and his development team at Bitcoin.com appear to have a renewed interest in the SLP, as the Tether announcement is just one of several new products coming to the network.
Tether holds approximately US$4.6 billion worth of stablecoins on its various networks according to Ver, which is spread over several blockchains such as Bitcoin (via the Omni Protocol and Liquid), Ethereum, EOS and Algorand. The chance for some of that capital to overflow on to Bitcoin Cash is a major leg up for the chain, which recently had a 5-hour "outage" due to low use, according to CoinTelegraph.
Bitcoin Cash also competes with an ever-growing number of Bitcoin forks, including Bitcoin Satoshi's Vision, which is now aggressively pursuing patents and legal action against other Bitcoin chains. However, none of them supports a distinctly fleshed out token ecosystem yet – which Bitcoin Cash is looking to change.
According to Ver, the next iteration of the SLP makes room for plenty of new products; mentioning the tokenisation of assets, fractional shares and even a new tool to easily automate the distribution of dividends, called the Dividend Calculator tool.
This tool will allow users to scan the blockchain to create a list of every address that holds a particular token (and likely the percentage of supply each address has). Ver imagines this could be used to pay dividend payments to those token holders, bringing greater efficiency to stock markets via security tokens, essentially allowing targeted airdrops on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain.
Opinion – Are private stablecoins on the way?
The announcement of Tether and an improved token economy is perhaps most exciting when considered in the context of BCH's other recent news – that privacy is coming to the chain. This arrives in the form of Cashfusion, which will be built into the bitcoin.com wallet and will be turned on by default.
Ver says this will enable Bitcoin Cash users to have
Privacy in the same ball park as a coin like Monero or some of these really strong privacy coins.”
He went on to explain why this will be built into the wallet by default
Money has to be fungible, and if it's not fungible it's not good money, and fungibility is just a fancier sounding word for privacy.”
Depending on how this privacy feature interacts with the SLP token layer, it could usher in a new era of private stablecoins which could revolutionise the industry and the use of money in general. However, given current attitudes towards certain privacy coins – such as the delisting of Monero (XMR) on many European exchanges – it's possible that the BCH camp will choose to play it safe.
A private stablecoin would be revolutionary in many ways, but undoubtedly many of them would be negative in the eyes of governments.
There is the obvious potential for money laundering, crime and black markets which are cited as the primary reasoning behind a recent push in Japan (where Ver lives) as the Financial Services Agency pressure exchanges to delist privacy coins in the country.
Furthermore, the US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has warned of Bitcoin becoming the next "Swiss bank account". Hardly the kind of political environment one would want to launch a private US dollar into, but not impossible – this is cryptocurrency after all.
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Disclosure: The author holds BTC, ETH, BNB, LINK, NEU, XRP, VET, USDT, POWR, ICX, ETC, LRC, WAN, XMR, BMX, GRIN, NXS, QASH, NEO, BEAM at the time of writing.
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