Sta­ble­coins: What they are and why Con­gress is look­ing to write rules for them

Mem­bers of Con­gress are work­ing to leg­is­late guardrails for sta­ble­coins, a unique form of cryp­tocur­ren­cy.
While a rel­a­tive­ly new con­cept, sta­ble­coins have explod­ed in pop­u­lar­i­ty, lead­ing law­mak­ers to seek reg­u­la­tion. Here’s what to know.
What sta­ble­coins are
Sta­ble­coins, while a form of cryp­tocur­ren­cy, dif­fer in some major respects from tra­di­tion­al cryp­to assets, such as bit­coin and ether. The biggest dif­fer­ence is that while tra­di­tion­al cryp­tocur­ren­cies can fluc­tu­ate wild­ly in price, that is not sup­posed to be the case with sta­ble­coins.
For instance, in the past month, the val­ue of one bit­coin has fluc­tu­at­ed between below $62,000 and as high as $73,000 — a dif­fer­ence of near­ly 18%. On the oth­er hand, sta­ble­coins, such as Teth­er, USDC, and Dai, the three largest sta­ble­coins by mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion, remain pegged …