In a big development, Rune Chirstensen, founder of MakerDAO has urged all the members to “seriously consider” preparing the depeg of the DAI stablecoin from the U.S. Dollar.
The comments came on the MakerDAO discord channel on Thursday, August 11, after the U.S. Treasury sanctioned crypto mixer Tornado Cash earlier this week. Post this, Circle – the issuer of USDC stablecoin – started freezing all the sanctioned USDC addresses.
As the OFAC banned residents from using Tornado Cash, while placing 44 USDC addresses under its sanctions list. As a result, Circle had to freeze $75,000 worth of stablecoins. On the MakerDAO Discord, Rune noted:
The sanctions are “unfortunately more serious than I first thought. I think we should seriously consider preparing to depeg from USD. It is almost inevitable it will happen and it is only realistic to do with huge amounts of preparation.”
Interestingly, Rune also proposed converting those USDC into ETH. Currently, more than 50% of MakerDAO’s DAI stablecoin is collateralized by USDC. Thus, Rune expressed concern over this heavy dependence on a single stablecoin and a centralized asset.
