The future economy: Anticipating the central role of crypto payments in financial transactions
With crypto gas prices dropping to lows after numerous recent innovations in scaling and interoperability across different chains, we can more vividly imagine a possible shift toward widespread crypto payments.
Crypto payments at scale are currently prevented by regulation, lack of understanding and mass adoption, as well as digital assets being used primarily for investment purposes. For starters, Satoshi Nakamoto’s original concept was steeped in the idea of peer-to-peer digital cash — that’s exactly what appears in the title of his 2008 Bitcoin white paper.
Despite the initial excitement and deep conviction surrounding this pioneering system since its inception, the core idea quietly slipped through the cracks as our focus shifted to cryptocurrency as an investment. The often-expressed nostalgia for the famous white paper became overshadowed by this unintentional deviation.
The remarkable ascent of exchanges, NFT marketplaces and the wide range of financial opportunities enabled by decentralized finance (DeFi) vividly illustrate this phenomenon. Investments are rarely used as mediums of exchange, so the price has been more important than utility in crypto. However, new decentralized systems kept being released, some of which were designed solely for utility, and this has helped change the outlook of cryptocurrency use cases in recent years.
Some Web3 companies have taken crypto payments for granted and created products like cryptocurrency-based credit cards that can be accepted in many locations, offering novel features as well as more traditional ones like cashback. The importance of crypto payments is the idea of decentralization — other benefits come later.
The introduction of stablecoins backed by fiat currency has
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