Bitcoin Crashing - Should You Use Stablecoins?

What are stablecoins?
Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies that are pegged (attached) in price to a fiat currency (USD) at all times during the existence of the coin.

How do they achieve this?
A. Centralized IOUs (Tether, Digix, TrueUSD) - The fiat currency is held in a physical location (some bank, somewhere).

B. Collateral Backed (Bitshares BitUSD, Maker DAI, Havven Nomins) - You need to lock up X amount (usually 1.5 to 2x) of crypto to generate 1x stable coin.

C. Seigniorage shares (Nubits, Basecoin) - Whether through algorithms or market demand, using another crypto (Basecoin Shares and Bonds, or NuShares), to expand or contract the supply of the stable coin.

Risks with Stablecoins

They lose their peg
Counterparty risk (centralized stablecoins)
Undercollaterized (collateral backed stablecoins)
death spirals (seigniorage shares stablecoins)

Should people use stablecoins?
My opinion (not financial advice) is if you don’t care about the price of Bitcoin, whether it is at $1,000 or $50,000, you shouldn’t use stable coins. But if you are a swing trader, it is an absolute MUST as you want to lock in your gains. You don’t want to make a 30% gain on an alt-coin trade only to have Bitcoin drop 25% or more on you.

If you are a day trader, it doesn’t matter too much because your only mission is to accumulate Bitcoins (or Satoshis if you are working on a budget).

List of exchanges and stable coins trade pairs:
Bancor Network - DAI
Binance - Tether
Bitfinex - Tether (but just use fiat as they support multiple)
Bittrex - Nubits, Tether, True USD
Cryptopia - Tether
HitBTC - Tether
Huobi - Tether
IDEX - DAI
Paradex - DAI
Radar Relay - DAI

Some more counterpoints to using stablecoins:
Preston Byrne - Stablecoins are doomed to fail

Bottom line: All stablecoins have risks, until we have an exchange that supports direct trade pairs for newer alt-coins (EOS/USD, ADA/EUR), they are our best options for avoiding Bitcoin volatility.

Links:
https://tether.to/
https://makerdao.com/
https://bitshares.org/technology/price-stable-cryptocurrencies/
https://www.trueusd.com/
https://nubits.com/
https://havven.io/
http://www.getbasecoin.com/
https://digix.global/
https://multicoin.capital/2018/01/17/an-overview-of-stablecoins/
https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/10/13/basecoin-bitshares-2-electric-boogaloo/
https://prestonbyrne.com/2017/12/10/stablecoins-are-doomed-to-fail/