Given that there are now $trillions going through stablecoins everyday, saying they "solve no problem" doesn't exactly agree with the marketplace.
These "trillions" are mainly used to move coins from exchange to exchange, for DeFi stuff and other "financial" types of usage. See
this study.
A note: The study differentiates "payments" (0.7%) and "transfers" (29.3%). "Transfers" at the first glance looks good but:
transfers consist mainly of high-value movements into and out of DeFi protocols and for internal treasury applications (Ved 2026; Ingham 2026).
So a large part of the transfers can be added to the financial categories ("Exchanges", "Finance" and "Infrastructure") which together make up around 50%. Thus we'd have about 65-70% of financial usage. The most relevant non-financial usage is "cross-border transfers among corporate branches across countries" (also part of "Transfers") which could make up around 10-15%, unfortunately the study isn't giving a clear number here. And then there is the "idle" category, which also groups together coins held in saving wallets, but also includes "lost" stablecoins.
some stablecoins have ZERO fees.
That can only apply to completely centralized stablecoins (on private blockchains or non-blockchain networks), as in all other cases you pay gas fees or other transaction fees. They're often small, but they add friction which you don't have at PayPal (from the consumer's perspective) nor with cash or credit cards etc..
You don't get to tout the benefits of Bitcoin and then add the L2, which negates the benefits you tout, and then talk about them together as if the combination magically solves a problem when it doesn't.
The L2's I'm talking about here are those that provide a so-called "unilateral exit". See the definition at
https://www.bitcoinlayers.org/glossary#unilateral-exit.
This means that you actually do have the final word in custody, and so you can't be censored. Both Lightning and Ark provide this feature.
I'm not talking about Liquid, RSK and similar stuff. I do see some potential for a special type of sidechain where unilateral exit is not possible but instead the exit mechanism works based on incentives (Threshold tBTC, Nomic, the future plans for Stacks ...) but here indeed you have more counterparty risk.
And if you want to say, "but the L2 doesn't add any risk", then why have Bitcoin in the first place?
Because if you consider the problems Satoshi wanted to solve relevant, then you need a strong base asset on decentralized foundations. These decentralized foundation cannot be provided by 1) non-blockchain payment ledgers nor by 2) semi-centralized fast blockchains. And thus we need the "slow" L1.
And Bitcoiners love volatility because... that's the whole point.
Some do, some not.
people buying their coffee in the morning with Bitcoin...
Is a completely irrelevant category of payments.
Poll
