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ICYMI, stablecoins are in deep shit proper now, and the chaos that unfolded this week has thrown your complete crypto ecosystem into turmoil with over $400 billion in losses from only one coin alone. In these instances of uncertainty, all we are able to depend on is that we are able to buy a can of AriZona Iced Tea for 99 cents, the same price that the refreshing beverage offered for in 1996. Mossy, a collective of three techy artists, thinks that an (unofficially) AriZona-backed stablecoin can save the crypto financial system.
A stablecoin, because the identify implies, is meant to be secure as a result of it tracks the worth of one other asset — just like how gold bars as soon as backed the U.S. greenback throughout gold-standard instances.
Within the case of TerraUSD (UST), previously one of many largest stablecoins that fell from grace this week, every UST coin was supposed to remain constantly equal in worth to 1 U.S. greenback. However there have been no bodily reserves — as a substitute, the group behind UST used algorithms and reserves of different cryptocurrencies to handle its worth. That system went haywire, main some holders of UST to withdraw their cash, and earlier than traders knew what had hit them, the panic and worry compounded and UST was buying and selling as little as nine cents on the dollar. UST’s sudden collapse has led to over $400 billion in losses for traders over the previous week or so, leaving people to question the, properly, stability of stablecoins as an entire.
Mossy’s answer for the calamitous sector, a stablecoin called USDTea, is backed by what they declare is America’s most secure asset: cans of AriZona Iced Tea. For over 30 years, AriZona founder Don Vultaggio has been working tirelessly against inflation to maintain the price of every can at precisely 99 cents, enjoying hardball with suppliers to maintain enter prices low and sacrificing his personal revenue for the sake of consistency.
As for Mossy, you’ll have seen their work earlier than. The group launched the “Non-fungible Olive Gardens” challenge that bought them in some hot water over copyright laws in addition to the “Blockedchain” NFTs that solely Twitter customers who’ve been blocked by famed (and pugnacious) enterprise capitalist Marc Andreessen can mint.
Mossy quietly introduced the USDTea stablecoin project on Twitter one and a half hours earlier than promoting out all 1,000 tokens they initially provided. We sat down with Brian Moore, one of many three members of the artists’ collective — one other member is Mike Lacher, who not too long ago went viral for his AI that harshly judges your music style, whereas the third member chooses to stay nameless. Moore regaled us along with his (largely) straight-faced, extremely severe clarification of Mossy’s ambitions to deliver stability to an unstable world — one can of iced tea at a time.
TC: So, who’re you? What is that this collective that tries to save lots of crypto by means of AriZona Iced Tea?
BM: We’re a bit of group referred to as Mossy, and the final three issues we’ve made have all been web3 tasks. We created non-fungible Olive Gardens, after which we did Blockedchain, which was an NFT collection that you could solely mint in the event you’re blocked by particular folks on Twitter, like Marc Andreesen. And now the newest is USDTea, which is a stablecoin that’s linked to essentially the most secure asset we all know on planet Earth, which is AriZona Iced Tea.
Are you able to actually join your pockets to this and get a token?
Effectively, to start with, I simply bought phrase that we’re totally out of the 1,000 that we began with [after about an hour and a half post-launch]. That’s the weirdness of this world. It was the identical factor with non-fungible Olive Gardens; we quietly launched it, after which it was gone inside I believe 10 hours.
AriZona Iced Tea is perhaps $0.99, however what about gasoline charges?
The best way the move works is the charges aren’t tremendous excessive. It’s an ERC 20 token. I purchased some and I believe it was, , negligible, like $4 or one thing in gasoline charges. After which, similar to some other stablecoins which might be pegged to forex, you’ll be able to all the time swap again. On this case, you’ll be able to burn your USDTea and we’ll ship you cans of AriZona Iced Tea, as a result of it wouldn’t be backed by it if we didn’t really try this. So we’ve our strategic reserves of AriZona Iced Tea to make use of if folks need to convert it again at any given time.
Do you even have 1,000 cans of tea?
It’s 1,000 cans the place we’re beginning. Which may increase sooner or later. And if we try this, I believe we’d in all probability be open to exterior auditing relying on the scenario, however at the moment, we’ve bought 1,000 cans principally, and we’ll distribute them as vital. Proper now we do have reserves cut up round totally different areas across the U.S.
Do you make these satirical web3 tasks as your full-time job?
The extra we do that, the extra it turns into one thing that’s extra full time, however I’d say we’re largely artists.
How many individuals are you?
We’re three folks. So we’re fairly … I suppose the phrase could be nimble. It permits us to make issues in a short time. Within the case of the destabilization of currency-pegged cryptocurrencies, , when did that complete snafu go down? We’re attempting to bolster the crypto financial system as shortly as attainable, and we are able to solely try this with a small group.
Did you conceive of this concept final week when Terra was collapsing?
Precisely. There’s one thing to be mentioned concerning the stability of stablecoins, proper? That’s half the phrase, secure. And then you definately suppose, what’s essentially the most secure factor you’ll be able to think about? AriZona Iced Tea, you actually can’t beat it.
How do you earn money off of this, or is earning money not the purpose?
It’s not essentially the purpose, actually, however I believe we need to assist ourselves in some unspecified time in the future. We’re within the curiosity of constructing attention-grabbing work on the web, and that’s the final purpose. If it makes us cash, nice, and if it doesn’t, then that’s tremendous too. Finally, we’re simply making attention-grabbing issues — making folks suppose, making folks snicker, or, , stabilize their belongings in canned iced teas.
How would you earn money?
These are fungible belongings, so it’s meant to be extra of a forex substitute than, say, a person artwork piece. One USDTea is the same as one USDTea. There’s no one among them that’s higher than the opposite or rarer than the opposite. They’re all equal to 1 can of AriZona’s Iced Tea.
However to redeem your can of tea, it’s important to pay a $20 flat processing price. What’s that price?
That’s simply actually the logistics of transport. That’s not a money-making scheme to make revenue off of the transaction; it’s to get you your personalised tea belongings that you could retailer in your individual location.
In your web site, you’ve gotten the query “what occurs when ETH crashes?”, and also you say that you simply replace the ETH/USDTea to match ETH/USD every so often. What does that entail?
It simply implies that as Ethereum would possibly change in worth, we need to match that so the speed finally ends up being round 99 cents.
How usually will you try this? I think about you don’t have an algorithm.
No, there’s no algorithm but. Which may come sooner or later — all of it will depend on how extensive we increase this. We’re taking it one step at a time. This has been about 90 minutes value of launch time, so as soon as we stabilize our personal scenario, we’ll determine what we have to do.
Clearly, Terra was the inspiration for this challenge. Do you’ve gotten any opinions or takes about what occurred, and the way Terra’s dealing with that?
I believe our firm speaks by means of the work itself. We’re right here to attempt to stabilize an unstable world, so I believe that backing our belongings in a brand new, progressive and most significantly secure asset … I believe that form of says all that we have to say about that scenario.
Would you say you’re bullish or bearish on crypto?
Are we bullish? Are we bearish? I don’t know. I believe we’re exploring it. We adore it as a medium by means of which to make attention-grabbing artwork items. I don’t suppose we essentially have a solution or have an animal to assign to it. You may simply say anteater or one thing like that.
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