#稳定币风险与合规 Seeing Circle and Aleo's USDCx, and looking at Tether and HoneyCoin's布局 in Africa, what comes to my mind is the frenzy of stablecoins in 2017. At that time, everyone thought stablecoins were the ultimate solution, but in the end, a large number of projects vanished, with only a few truly surviving.

These two pieces of information reflect the divergence in the current stablecoin sector: one path leads to a high-end combination of privacy and compliance—USDCx aims at institutional settlements, using privacy protection to alleviate regulatory anxiety; the other path focuses on inclusive scenarios for payment applications—USDT addresses cross-border pain points through local ecosystems. This is actually a sign of maturity, but it also carries risks.

I understand the logic of privacy stablecoins, but history tells me that the more we move towards privacy, the more likely we are to step on the compliance red line. Just look at what happened to those projects that touted privacy in the past. Institutional settlement has never required mystery, but rather auditability and traceability. USDCx needs to walk a tightrope between privacy and compliance, which is much more difficult than it seems on the surface.

HoneyCoin takes a pragmatic approach, and the integration of USDT in the POS payment terminal may seem ordinary, but it actually touches the core of the ultimate goal of payments - liquidity coverage. However, the payment ecosystem in Africa is weak, and whether this cooperation can truly materialize depends on whether the three major challenges of merchant settlement, currency exchange, and risk control can be resolved. Having only a technical solution is far from enough.

Both directions are heating up, but they face real risks. Privacy and inclusiveness are both false propositions if the underlying economic incentives and regulatory space are not truly connected. The historical lesson is that the ultimate test of stablecoins has never been in technology, but in finding a balance between trust and freedom. As it stands, no one has truly achieved this yet.