I have been called a Bitcoin maxi a lot due to my criticism of ETH, SOL and proof-of-stake, so it might come as a surprise that there is something else other than Bitcoin that I am currently very bullish on: the Terra Ecosystem, specially UST.
There is no doubt in my mind that UST is the best stable coin in the market, without anything else even coming close to it.
DAI is decentralized which is good and I still hold some as a buying reserve, but UST is not only decentralized, but requires NO COLLATERAL.
Have you seen the price action on LUNA recently? UST is to blame for that.
LUNA sees the price action, but UST is the start.
With that said, if UST is that good, why hasn't it taken over the entire crypto market yet?
The answer is simple: It's awkward to buy UST and even more awkward to spend it.
This creates a small barrier to entry that has kept UST in a bit of obscurity.
So in this short article, I am going to tell you the simplest, and I think cheapest, way to onboard and outboard UST.
[This is GBP focused]
Buying UST:
Deposit [GBP] to Gemini Active Trader -> Buy BTC (0.25% fee) -> Transfer to KuCoin (Free) -> Sell BTC for UST (0.05% fee) -> Withdraw to Terra Wallet ($4 fee).
Note: Now that you have UST in your Terra wallet, I would suggest binding it on Anchor Protocol for a juicy average 20% APY. No reason to have it gathering dust in your wallet.
Spending UST:
Withdraw UST to KuCoin (Transaction Fee variable) -> Buy BTC with UST (0.05% fee) -> Buy LTC with BTC (0.05% fee) -> Send LTC to FTX (0.001 LTC) -> Sell LTC for BTC (0.02% fee) -> Withdraw BTC to wallet (Free)
The biggest issue here is that there are very few exchanges at the moment that have UST on offer.
Also, I made a point of the final destination being a private wallet, so taking into account the free withdrawals from FTX and Gemini
This is about to change with Nexo and Kraken adding native LUNA (bear in mind, Gemini and Coinbase already have UST but is an ERC-20 token version), so this path might change.
For now, I believe this is the cheapest way, even if it takes some steps.
Enjoy using the best stable coin you can.
PS: If you want some referral codes for all the exchanges mentioned, you can find them below
