Significant developments continue to unfold in the cryptocurrency market. According to analysts at the crypto investment firm CoinShares, a Bitcoin-based stablecoin that could rival other stablecoins in speed and cost may hit the market in 2024. CoinShares analysts revealed in their latest report published on January 22 that they expect the year 2024 to be very important for the stablecoin sector in relation to Bitcoin.
CoinShares Analysts Offer Noteworthy Prediction
The prediction in question comes from CoinShares’ head of Bitcoin research, Christopher Bendiksen, and analyst Matthew Kimmel. In their report, the analysts stated:
“We anticipate that at least theoretically viable development projects will finally emerge as accessible tools.”
The duo explained that a successful Bitcoin stablecoin project could inherit the fundamental stability of the Bitcoin infrastructure while potentially competing with alternatives in speed and cost. Bendiksen and Kimmel argued that Bitcoin is a platform for stablecoin projects, stating:
“The Bitcoin blockchain network has the longest history, greatest stability, least technical error, and strongest assurance.”
Although Bitcoin-based stablecoin projects have been created before, Bendiksen and Kimmel predict that a Bitcoin-based stablecoin project will become easily accessible to users this year:
“We suspect that businesses and Bitcoin-based projects will subsequently integrate stablecoin spending in a stable manner, paving the way for continuous growth in usage.”
The analysts argue that this could further strengthen Bitcoin’s monetary properties and its resistance to censorship. However, Bendiksen and Kimmel acknowledge that technical barriers still exist and that history has shown stablecoin users tend to prefer networks that offer faster transactions and lower costs:
“Not only is Bitcoin’s architecture designed without the flexibility to natively support external assets like dollar-pegged tokens, but history has also shown a tendency for stablecoin adoption to flow towards the platform offering the lowest transaction costs and highest speed.”
Stablecoin Projects in the Bitcoin Ecosystem
According to Trust Machines, various Bitcoin infrastructure companies such as Stacks, RSK, and Liquid Network have included stablecoin projects on top of Bitcoin’s base layer. USDA, Dollar on Chain (DoC), rDAI, and Liquid-based Tether (L-USDt) are among the US dollar-denominated stablecoin projects launched on the Bitcoin Layer-2 network.
While these stablecoins are located in Bitcoin’s Layer-2 projects, Trust Machines says that stablecoin projects could eventually come to Bitcoin’s main network, but this is not currently possible.
A company that claims it will soon release a stablecoin in the bitRC20 format on the Bitcoin blockchain network, supported by the venture capital arm of the cryptocurrency exchange OKX, is bitSmiley Labs. According to the latest technical report prepared for bitUSD, all bitUSD in circulation will be supported with excess collateral, and all bitUSD transactions will be publicly visible on the Bitcoin blockchain network.
