Justice for Stablecoins

For years, people thought fiat-backed crypto was all hype, no value. Now that the government's on board, Canadians should be too.

- By Lucas Matheson

I BOUGHT MY FIRST Bitcoin in 2011, in the middle of my MBA at the University of Alberta. Everyone was curious about crypto back then, but most businesses weren't sure what to make of it. For users, the payment experience was confusing and clunky, and use cases were limited to the odd high-profile anecdote. Case in point: the first documented Bitcoin purchase was made in 2010 by American software developer Laszlo Hanyecz, who paid for two Papa Johns pizzas with 10,000 Bitcoin (worth roughly US$856 million today). Beyond headlines like these, there was no straightforward way for regular people to learn enough about crypto to use it to their benefit.

It's a different story today. As of this writing, the total market value of global cryptocurrencies is US$3.2 trillion. I'm now the CEO of Coinbase Canada, the domestic arm of a global platform that allows people to buy and sell digital assets—a process that's a lot easier than it used to be. I've even used crypto to buy my morning coffee in downtown Toronto. These days, the biggest barrier to widespread use is largely conceptual. Many Canadians can understand generative AI because they experience tangible, positive results from everyday interactions with tools like ChatGPT. Blockchains, invisible security databases that underpin crypto, are more abstract.

Stablecoins can drive home crypto's material upsides. These are designed to maintain consistent value because they’re tied to a currency. They’re effectively one-to-one fiat-backed tokens—unlike crypto assets like Bitcoin, whose value fluctuates with market demand. If you buy a U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoin, for example, the issuer—the fintech company or bank that creates it—takes your money and deposits it into U.S. treasuries. Then it issues you an equivalent token you can use online.