Crypto solves this problem.
You may argue that current payment processors do a poor job at b) but they do an infinitely better job than crypto since it's a division by zero situation.
Also crypto isn't Bitcoin. There are plenty of other options that are close to "tap to pay"
If that is a fear shared among the general population, shouldn't that be a clear anti-trust concern?
Is losing your Amazon account that big of a deal? Are there really no practical alternatives? Is this fear of displeasing Amazon rational? If so, how come I don't hear any bells going off in government regulators?
This is a concern for people who have a lot of digital content under Amazon's umbrella. I have hundreds of audiobooks, ebooks, music, and movies - and if I lose my Amazon account I lose access to hundreds if not thousands of dollars of content.
As for trying to constrain Amazon to play fair, and treat the peasants nicely? Good luck.
Amazon is a rival to Google in terms of content delivered to people, and, like Google, Amazon performs a lot of services for the federal government. They have lobbyists, legal teams, and even politicians in their pocket.
Your subjective experience, or a lack of interest from legislators, does not mean these issues do not exist.
This indicates to me that the assets you put into their control are disposable for you or that you have no reasonable alternative. The former is easy for me to believe. That latter is difficult for me to believe. Together, it makes me disinclined to feel that the government needs to take any action on your behalf.
But those are limited to purchasing things where ownership is also meaningfully controlled by crypto.
> b) "have some recourse if someone takes my money and doesn't send me anything"
Your recourse is the legal system. Crypto isn't mutually exclusive with working with trusted, legally registered corporations whom you can sue.
I agree with this. The problem is the way from "isn't mutually exclusive" (which I also agree with) to "actually integrated with the legal system". The latter part is nonexistent and likely constitutes 99% of the moat of the current payment providers.
Say someone pays for something via crypto, do you have to manually confirm each time before giving them the product/service?
I will say -- "immutability" isn't necessarily the horror that people make it out to be. Which is to say, oh $500 gets transferred from A to B incorrectly. The fact that you literally can't "undo" that doesn't much matter -- you just transfer 500 from B to A on a 2nd transaction.
1. Some new or existing payment company helps merchants to transact in cryptocurrency, because it's difficult for the merchants to do it themselves.
2. This payment company now becomes the new target for attacks, and the only change is from fiat currency to cryptocurrency.
An obvious answer to #1 is for merchants to process cryptocurrencies themselves, but that implies that all the problems in dealing with fiat currency (fraud detection, accessibility, scalability, etc.) is somehow easier with cryptocurrency, and I am not sure that is the case.