Final Exam: The Stablecoin Stress Test

This is the part where the training wheels come off. No warm-up, no “guess before you read,” no friendly hint in the margin — just the course asking whether any of it stuck. The five lessons already gave you everything: the peg, the four families, reserves and vaults, the death spiral, depegs and the new rulebook. Read every option twice. The trap is almost always the one that sounds 90% right.

How this exam works

This is a graded exam. Questions come one at a time. Once you submit an answer it is final — there is no going back, no second try, and a wrong answer simply fails that question. Your score stays hidden until the end, where you need 70% to pass. Read every option twice before you commit.

Question 1 of 24

What is the single defining promise of a stablecoin?

To be issued only by national central banksTo rise in price faster than Bitcoin over any given yearTo hold a steady value pegged to a reference like the US dollar, so 1 token stays worth about $1To pay every holder a guaranteed 20% annual yield

Select an answer to continue.

Course Recap

Big picture

The whole stablecoin landscape

Stablecoins, end to end
- The peg & families
  - Promise: hold ~$1, act as digital cash
  - Arbitrage (mint/redeem) enforces the peg
  - Fiat, crypto, algorithmic, commodity
  - ~$320B total; USDT ~$190B, USDC ~$78B
- Fiat-backed (USDT/USDC)
  - Mint with dollars, redeem for dollars
  - Reserves: T-bills + cash, quality matters
  - Attestation (snapshot) vs audit (deep)
  - Freeze/blacklist = centralization trade-off
- Crypto-backed (DAI/Sky)
  - Lock crypto in a vault/CDP, mint DAI
  - Over-collateralized: ratio = collateral ÷ debt
  - Below threshold → liquidation
  - Stability fee, DSR, Peg Stability Module
- Algorithmic
  - Seigniorage two-token (UST↔LUNA)
  - Endogenous collateral can evaporate
  - Death spiral when the peg slips
  - Terra/UST May 2022: ~$40B wiped
- Depegs, risks & rules
  - Temporary (recovers) vs terminal (dead)
  - USDC/SVB March 2023: ~$0.87 then recovered
  - Risk is family-specific; evaluate the backing
  - GENIUS Act (US 2025) & MiCA (EU)

Five lessons, one map: the peg held by arbitrage, the four families and how each is backed, the centralization of fiat reserves, the over-collateralized crypto vault, the algorithmic death spiral, and the depegs and rules that govern them all.

If you cleared 70%, you can now read a stablecoin’s design like an X-ray: what backs it, who controls it, how it holds the peg, and exactly how it might break. That is genuine literacy in the part of crypto that most wants to be boring — and usually should be. Well done.