I get that ICP is mostly a utility token for governance and converting to cycles. But is there a viable use-case as a currency in the traditional sense? Seeing that transactions are fast, cheap and more environment friendly, it would be an upgrade to the top cryptocurrencies today.
Is this not the point of ICP? Does it lack security to behave as a currency or anything like that?
I imagine cycles would be the better currency, though it would need to be wrapped in order to interop with other tokens.
I agree that cycles have a better characteristics profile to qualify as a currency… my questions arising therefrom are: 1) isn’t there a limit to the number of cycles that one can hold? and 2) is it likely that in the future the Platform would permit converting cycles into ICP?
We can imagine a service that wraps cycles to tokenized cycles. WCYCLE can be freely traded without canister limitations, and unwrapped for the underlying at any time.
That’s really interesting! So if I get it right, that would basically give a decentralized stablecoin with the same low fees as ICP, and it would be possible to buy on exchanges without going through the ICP->CYCLE conversion? Seems like a great use-case to me!
Yep, exactly. One caveat is that because 1T cycles = 1 XDR (about 1.44 USD) which is not exactly a commonly used currency, a price oracle is still quite necessary for most users.