Mithat Can Kartlaşmış 
A Bitcoin-based stablecoin that could challenge the speed and cost of other stablecoins in the industry could launch in 2024, according to cryptocurrency investment firm CoinShares.
You might like: Maxine Waters Questions Meta’s Digital Assets
According to CoinShares’ latest outlook report dated January 22, analysts believe that 2024 will be a critical year for Bitcoin in the stablecoin arena. Christopher Bendiksen, CoinShares‘ head of Bitcoin research, and analyst Matthew Kimmel say, “We expect that a Bitcoin project focused on competing in the modern stablecoin sector will become easily accessible to users within this year.”
Although Bitcoin stablecoin projects have been created before, Bendiksen and Kimmel predict that a Bitcoin-based stablecoin project will become easily accessible to users in 2024.
“A successful Bitcoin stablecoin project could even ‘challenge’ the speed and cost of alternatives, and in doing so, inherit the underlying stability of the Bitcoin infrastructure,” the pair said, defending Bitcoin as a platform for stablecoins, saying, “The Bitcoin blockchain has the longest history, greatest stability, least technical debt, and strongest guarantees.
Bitcoin-based stablecoins may have been created before, but Bendiksen and Kimmel predict that a Bitcoin-based stablecoin project will become easily accessible to users in 2024.
“We anticipate that this will pave the way for continued usage growth, as businesses and Bitcoin add-ons gradually start to integrate stablecoin spending,” they add. In addition, they argue that this could strengthen Bitcoin’s money properties and increase its resistance to censorship.
Bitcoin-based stablecoins
However, technical hurdles still exist, and history shows that stablecoin users tend to prefer faster and lower-cost networks. Bendiksen and Kimmel say, “While Bitcoin was not designed with the flexibility to naturally support external assets like dollar-backed tokens, history has shown that stablecoin adoption has generally gravitated towards the platform offering the cheapest transaction costs and highest speed.”
According to Trust Machines, many Bitcoin infrastructure firms, such as Stacks, RSK, and Liquid Network, have already created stablecoins on top of Bitcoin’s base layer.
USDA, Dollar on Chain (DoC), rDAI (RDAI), and Liquid Tether (L-USDT) are US dollar-denominated stablecoins that have been launched on Bitcoin’s second layer.
Although these stablecoins exist on Bitcoin’s second layer, Trust Machines notes that stablecoins could eventually come to Bitcoin’s base layer, but that this is “not currently possible.”
One company that plans to soon launch a stablecoin on the Bitcoin blockchain in “bitRC20 format” is bitSmiley Labs, which has a venture capital arm of OKX’s cryptocurrency exchange.
According to the latest white paper for “bitUSD,” all circulating bitUSD will be backed by excess collateral, and all bitUSD transactions will be viewable by the public on the Bitcoin blockchain. However, according to the WhitePaper, bitUSD will only be “lightly pegged” to the US dollar.