The way I see it though is it's a solution looking for a problem.
"Look, we can build a decentralized database."
"Wow, let's try and use this to replace EVERYTHING"... and yet so far it has replaced nothing.
The most basic and obvious use cases – a Venmo replacement, a credit card replacement, and sending money across borders – these are all still done the traditional way, and it doesn't seem like that's about to change.
I'm hoping to be proven wrong, especially for the credit cards use case. Would be nice if everything cost 3% less. But it doesn't appear to be on the horizon.
Eh, the fees on cards are a bit of a myth. Not that they don't exist, but their impact. Particularly in IRL transactions. Sure, a cash transaction doesn't cost the merchant 3% straight off, but it does pile on extra banking costs, extra security costs, extra staff time to handle cash etc.
But sure, it would be nice to have a cheaper way with similar guarantees for online transactions. The alternative is usually bank transfers, but with those, if you get defrauded it's on you, so I quite like CCs for that.
Also in a lot of countries fees are capped way lower than 3%...
The way I see it though is it's a solution looking for a problem.
"Look, we can build a decentralized database."
"Wow, let's try and use this to replace EVERYTHING"... and yet so far it has replaced nothing.
The most basic and obvious use cases – a Venmo replacement, a credit card replacement, and sending money across borders – these are all still done the traditional way, and it doesn't seem like that's about to change.
I'm hoping to be proven wrong, especially for the credit cards use case. Would be nice if everything cost 3% less. But it doesn't appear to be on the horizon.