antone.

I strongly disagree with Mike (and @zachxbt) on this issue. If Circle and other stablecoin issuers implement arbitrary freeze/seize functions beyond what the law requires, then not only is code not law, but also law is not law. Instead what a single executive inside a single corporation decides is law. Stablecoins aren't just payment instruments. (The fact that the same bank lobby that's trying to kill crypto keeps arguing that they are is reason enough to believe they aren't). Stables are a key pillar in DeFi. They are often the second largest asset in DeFi pools and the most common denominator in DeFi swaps. Drift was a DeFi protocol. The magical "atomic swap" that the crypto industry argues only permissionless systems enable (in ways that TradFi mechanically cannot) often features a stablecoin. Arbitrary issuer censorship thus reduces the trust assumption of the largest DeFi pools and most atomic swaps down to "what a corporate exec decides." It also means the same presumption of guilt that's ruined TradFi and inspired crypto in the first place is now endemic on chain as well. At this point you might as well use Jamie Dimon's hard-to-pronounce database masquerading as a blockchain. Swap trust in Jeremy to trust in Jamie—it's the same risk. Remember, most TradFi financial censorship emanates from the risk-based AML framework that is now the standard. If you import that into stablecoins then its only a matter of time until the bar for censorship collapses to anything at any time. It happened in banking. It will happen in DeFi. Executives will always cover their ass. Meanwhile, sophisticated hackers just switch to atomically swapping every stablecoin stolen in a breach into a native coin. Then the conversation shits to validator censorship and chain halts. It's the next logical step. Diminishing the settlement security of the vast majority of crypto transactions, which are honest, to stop the small minority that are hacks is a bad tradeoff. It's why Satoshi mentioned a bank bailout in the genesis block. It's why we, as an industry, hated Chokepoint 2.0. It's why we fight for DeFi developer immunity and support falsely accused builders who engineered solutions for on-chain privacy. It's also why TradFi wants crypto to have more censorship, too. They want our solutions to be just as flawed as theirs. Let's not give it to them.