I feel like people throw around the term “stablecoin” too loosely. It’s become a kind of suitcase word - you can pack whatever you want into it, zip it closed, and the people looking at it wouldn’t know. I’ve historically taken the view that a true stablecoin has moneyness. That is to say, it has a monetary premium. The easiest way to detect this is from the yield demanded by holders. USDT definitely has it. USDC as well. For a long time, DAI did as well. In the real world, this would also include transactional “user interfaces” like a checking account or privately issued paper banknotes. At the far other end of the spectrum are pure yield-bearing products that are designed not to lose principal, but are illiquid. A savings bond is a good example. These are savings products, and are not stablecoins except in the most generous of characterizations. But in reality it’s a spectrum. There is a fair amount of middle ground - everything from Amazon gift cards to money market funds to DeFi deposits. To organize my own thoughts, I have a kind of mental hierarchy of needs for stablecoins (similar to the famous Maslow hierarchy of needs for personal needs). At the very base is LIQUIDITY. If your stablecoin can’t be traded for other kinds of money on short notice, you don’t have a stablecoin. You may have a mere savings product at best, and a toxic asset at worst. Typically liquidity begins with a primary market (aka redemptions), although algorithmic stablecoins, many central banks, and some old banknote issuers have minimized or forgone a primary market and relied primarily on direct secondary market interventions. However, liquidity only keeps you a stablecoin in the moment. The second, only slightly less important, need is SOLVENCY. Note that when I say second most important, it’s like saying water - vital for survival - is less important than air. It’s still necessary, but your product’s value dies quicker from no liquidity than no solvency. So far, this conveniently maps onto Maslow’s most important need being physiological (liquidity) and safety (solvency). And the next step up the pyramid keeps the analogy going. Maslow’s third level was love/belonging/socialization. For a stablecoin, this is INTEGRATION. What does integration look like? In practice, this is primarily accepting the asset as collateral. I could probably expand this a bit to specify that it’s only a third party if it’s an *unrelated* party. But I’m still on the fence. For example, would we deny that USDe is widely accepted (at least on Ethereum and a few other chains) even though much of that acceptance was driven by having important founders in the seed and extension rounds? Maybe, maybe not. It’s also a footnote that is less important over time, as acceptance grows beyond assets overseen by bagholders. But it’s still good to push back the clock to 2024 and ask if that would have met the integration standard. For now, I think I would just say acceptance as collateral across many secondary market places satisfies integration - even if it’s via money-losing incentives, related party arrangements, or own-use to get loans.