The Wall Street Journal: Stablecoins are essentially 'private currencies' and may pose risks to the financial system BlockBeats News: On May 26th, The Wall Street Journal published an article stating that stablecoins are essentially "private currencies", and although the GENIUS and CLARITY Acts are attempting to promote stablecoin compliance, stablecoins may still pose structural risks to the financial system. The article states that stablecoins aim to combine the stability of the US dollar with the high efficiency of blockchain payments, but due to their operation on fragmented and private infrastructure, they do not possess the "uniformity" of the traditional US dollar system. Although USDT and USDC are anchored to the US dollar, their prices will still deviate from 1 dollar. Stable coin issuers have a natural incentive to expand their scale and pursue returns, which may be achieved by allocating higher risk and less liquid assets to increase returns. Once the value of related assets declines, stablecoins may not be able to maintain their anchoring, leading to concentrated redemptions by users and a chain reaction in the market. In addition, the article cites Chainalysis data stating that stablecoins account for 84% of illegal cryptocurrency activities, including evading sanctions and money laundering. At present, stablecoins are mainly used for encrypted transactions, with less than 1% of real economy payments. Stablecoins are repeating the path of private currency experimentation in the 19th century American "free banking era". Although stablecoins have become an important direction for the evolution of payment technology, they may have to accept stricter supervision and deeper integration into the central bank system like banks in the future. [Original link]