My question is, which real-world problem is actually solved by crypto? All I know is transferring money over the border gets much easier than pre-bitcoin era.
But that again, is such a low niche and something that includes exchanges fees too
Recently I wanted to get a domain name on black friday so I went to namecheap and paid them 10 $ in crypto, I had to pay 80 cents to an exchange to convert my usdc polygon to btc to then + some btc fees because namecheap just accepted that
I am a teenager so technically buying this domain pseudo-anonymously (yes I know I can do things with monero too so thus anonymously too) is the only real use case
I think stablecoins have potential to atleast remove this stripe/paypal/visa/mastercard etc.'s monopoly and allow cheap payments
Honestly I wish UPI from India or Pix from brazil were implemented at a global scale, they are so good.
My thoughts are nuanced but since I am a teen and yes I have a bank account but it cant be operated fully until I turn 18 by me, its all just complicated and crypto kinda solves some aspect of it
But this whole field is niche too and most people who build on these primitives basically build gambling as the author said
Here are my thoughts on crypto that one time I was on HackerNews on a similar thread and wanted to give a proper space to my thoguhts: https://justforhn.mataroa.blog/blog/most-crypto-is-doomed-to...
The domain registrar is required to have valid contact information for you. Sure, you could lie to them, but then you risk having your account terminated.
So I'm not sure this is a real use case for crypto.
Still, I would argue that crypto with things like njal.la and orangehosting etc. kind of allow it to be a real-use
Personally,So this reduces the "use-case" to basically a bank account for teenagers with (no?) limits and less KYC overall
Other online payment methods (Visa, PayPal, Stripe, your bank's ACH, etc.) do. These policies start by disallowing illegal transactions (crime). Then they disallow unfair transactions (buyer claims not to like the quality of the item, etc.). Then they disallow immoral transactions (gambling, pornography, etc.). Then they disallow anything... unseemly? (2022 Freedom Convoy protests, Stripe briefly banning certain legal, non-adult LGBTQ+ transactions in 2025, etc.).
Is it a problem that your currency-transfer system enforces policy? Many people don't care, but to some, yes, it is a problem. They don't want PayPal telling them what they can and can't do with their hard-earned money, because that's the job of their government, their religion, and their conscience. They want their online cash to behave like offline cash.
If you were designing a system architecture for value transfer, would your low-level primitives throw policy exceptions, or would you delegate that responsibility higher in the system?
Something that outside of the US is solved by SWIFT, or the state equivalent of instant bank transfer. Most of the rest of the world has instant, or near instant bank transfers. The US doesn't, it has venmo or similar.
However, with a lot of BTC trading sites, you get money from real people's accounts, so its not that crazy as long as the amounts are low.
- private (as in privacy) store of value without necesity to build a vault (or trust a 3rd party for storing)
- Transfer of money by immigrants "back home". Good luck sending money to Cuba or Venezuela right now
- Micropayments / Webpayments via Lightning (TradFi failed on this) - you can literally send 10cent right now to someone at the other end of the world - or pay for a news article.
- Decentralized / Ad-free social media like Nostr. Pay with micropayments for everything (hosting, forwarding, micro-donation for content). If you look at how damaging the ad-based social media economy is fighting for engagement and attention, it is obvious society is better of without Instagram/Facebook/Youtube/Tiktok trying to get you to watch more, to get more ad revenue
- Insurance against dictatorships taking over free democracies. If monetary policy is not done my the government, they can't use it to control the people. In Bitcoin, the people are deciding and voting on monetary policy independent of the government (miners, node runners/validators, acceptance of transfers etc.)
- Insurance about fiat devaluation (governments printing money)