I've been traveling all over the world for the last ten years. I've never had any serious problems paying for anything with good old fashioned credit/debit cards. Even getting cash in the local currency is trivial with ATMs.
This is the genesis of a new crypto universe. It's hugely hyped, and a lot of it is clearly BS. But underlying the hype and hysteria there's a kernel of a new paradigm emerging.
Crypto applications promise to provide disintermediation on a scale not seen before. Direct peer to peer transactions, conducted transparently, without a need to verify trust and happening simultaneously anywhere in the world.
Not only that but smart contracts bring with them the potential to do stuff that simply is not possible right now. For example, providing instant conditional transactions (if my fave rental car is available book it, otherwise search for another solution, but only from these sources at this price) etc etc etc. We don't know what this means, but it could be a revolution. Or not. :)
Smart contracts, and all the other buzz words turn regular folk away. I'm hedging my bets on the coin with a dog on it for mass adoption. Even the word "Ethereum" (and "Eth") is less user-friendly to "Doge".
For me, all this ETH stuff is just hype (very few ETH owners actually care about the currency side of things and its already gone too far into pyramid scheme territory to ever recover imo). The dog coin works just great as it is right now for the amount of users it has. Any upgrades should be manageable before they are ever necessary.
They don't. All of "disentermidation" immediately turns around and restores all the institutions based on, you know, trust.
> Direct peer to peer transactions, conducted transparently, without a need to verify trust
Yup. Until you pay for something, and that something never arrives.
> (if my fave rental car is available book it, otherwise search for another solution, but only from these sources at this price)
Literally nothing prevents you from doing it right now, with existing technologies... Oh, wait. All rental car companies are closed to any integrations of any kind. Smart contracts will do literally nothing in this scenario.
Besides. If I go and rent a car from, say, Hertz, I get a contract written in plain language. It may be a little obtuse, but I can read and understand it. Smart contracts on the other hand are written in obscure esoteric programmming languages. Good luck telling people "don't worry, you won't be scammed out of your money because it has 'smart' and 'crypto' in it".