I think if there is one downside to decentralization is that there is no leader or CEO to take charge and provide the drive and vision going forward...
Absolutely!
Looking at the current Stablecoin universe -
https://ecoin4dummies.com/2019-stable-coins-year-reasons/The market leader is USDT - centralized, and main questions is does it really have the fiat it claims to back it., and suspicions around the people behind it?
USDC (Poloniex {Goldman Sachs}, Gemini $, DAI and .Paxos - (ERC 20 tokens).. each have their weaknesses.
BTS has..
...transaction speed capability of 100k/sec and minimal transaction costs....What's the best network speed for ERC 20 based token can theoretically achieve?
...the capability of an entity (government) to birth its own MPA...
(Wasn't there a project related to issuing EC$ - Eastern Caribbean dollar on the DEX for the seven nations of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States?)
With growth potential embodied in BEOS (EOS), Quintric, BitSpark, multilingual gateways, merchant POS terminals, User Issued Assets, etc.,
and fundamental features of being trustless (no counterparty) and relatively energy efficient.
why shouldn't BTS smartcoins be the leader of the pack..?
A very good article here for those who need a primer...
https://multicoin.capital/2018/01/17/an-overview-of-stablecoins/{excerpt..}
Stablecoins are one of the highest convexity opportunities in crypto. They aim to become global, fiat-free, digital cash, so the total addressable market (TAM) is simply that of all the money in the world: ~$90T. The opportunity for stablecoins is, intrinsically, the largest possible TAM. This vision is larger than that of Bitcoin itself. A fiat-free currency that’s price stable will challenge the legitimacy of weak governments around the world
....four features that a cryptocurrency needs in order to become global, fiat-free, digital cash:
Price stability
Scalability
Privacy
Decentralization (i.e. collateral is not held by a single entity, like Tether)BTS is lagging in the Privacy area...it needs to make that Stealth feature available like yesterday..
It is entirely possible that stablecoins could provide the desired stability without maintaining a perfect peg. In fact, once economies develop around the stablecoin itself, the peg will begin to matter less and less. If merchants are willing to hold and accept USD-pegged stablecoins, and they in turn pay their suppliers in the same stablecoin, and that stablecoin is widely used as a medium of exchange, then maintaining a perfect peg becomes increasingly less important.
why should BTS (and all other crypto it seems) prices go up and down based primarily on BTC's movement?
Particularly when the BTC price can be manipulated because ...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-08/the-bitcoin-whales-1-000-people-who-own-40-percent-of-the-market“I think there are a few hundred guys,” says Kyle Samani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital. “They all probably can call each other, and they probably have.”
Cboe pulls the plug on bitcoin futures trading — for now
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/cboe-pulls-the-plug-on-bitcoin-futures-trading-for-now-2019-03-15I think the sooner BTS can "delink" itself from the volatility of BTC the sooner it will be able to cut it's own path to the top -- based on its own merits..