It's how you package it

It is always a bit funny when the argument of "can't spend crypto easily" comes up in conversation, and I show them my Wirex Card with proximity pay and say, everywhere takes crypto.

Oh.

It isn't that the shops themselves are taking crypto, there is no "Bitcoin accepted here" sign on the door - but through the magic of backend services, it is possible for all of the conversions to get done so that the merchant will be paid in the local currency, not crypto. However, for all intents and purposes for the buyer, this is good enough to be usable, especially since it works very much like their own debit accounts they already use.

Having said that, I don't really use crypto much, so other than for verification, it doesn't matter for me at all at the moment. However, I do like to have contingency plans available just in case, so several months ago I ordered a card from crypto.com to pair with my Wirex card. It came today and I have to say, the packaging of these cards is way better than when the bank sends a new card to me.

Rather than an envelope with a card glued to a piece of paper, both cards came packaged in "experience packaging", effectively productizing the opening itself as if it is a new device. Don't worry, I am not going to do an unboxing video for this, but it is interesting to note that having it come this way does make it feel more personal, which kind of reminds that we own what it holds. The bankcard renewals I get in the mail is a reminder that they are doing me a favor, as if the money I hold with them is not mine and they do not profit from it.

As you can see, the card is enabled by Visa, which if you read recently, processed 2.5B worth of crypto transactions on Visa-powered cards in the last quarter of 2021 - which accounted for 70% of the entire year of all crypto-related transactions. This is no small sum and expect that in the coming two years, that figure is going to continue to climb, even if the bear market comes a callin' to drop the value of tokens.

The reason is that I think that at some point, people will increasingly be moving into crypto and out again for daily transactions of various kinds and especially during the bear, there will be a lot coming in at lows, so at pumps, people will take advantage of the gains, since it is so easy to do so.

While selling puts downward pressure on price overall, it might be more important at this stage to have transactional volume of real-world usage, normalizing crypto in daily life. What this does is not only get people using crypto, it also turns their attention to different ways to earn it, which inevitably leads down the rabbit holes of DeFi, staking, gig- and creator- economies and social cryptos. So while they are spending, they are also looking to earn and this will put additional pressure on development, as well as potentially taking part of salary payments in crypto also.

It doesn't take much to shift the focus of the institutions themselves and when it comes to mass adoption of crypto, the "critical mass" is likely much lower than people think it is. Because once there are profits to be made, corporations will come to fill the holes and in so doing, build products and services to capture the market, inevitably attracting more into the world of crypto.

While this sounds like a "more of the same" situation as the current economy, crypto has the opt-out function in-built and will see more people understand the importance of decentralization, which will pressure the corporations involved to treat them better, or have themselves demonetized through a lack of usage.

The battle between centralization and decentralization is going to be the most important battle in living memory and well beyond, but replacing the economy as we know it is not going to be one of those overnight wins. It is going to be hard-fought and take decades, and even then it will still be a near constant struggle.

People don't change their conditioning easily, which is why so many of the social problems we have today, have been around for millennia. Much of these issues stem from people's desire for power over others and that is no different in the economy. Money itself is a proxy for power, which is why we use the term "purchasing power" of a currency. While we might look at the cost of a carton of milk, that same dollar can be part of buying an army also. This is why it is so dangerous to have all of the wealth in so few hands, because they will play power games, at the expense of those they can buy.

I wonder how many countries would go to war if citizens had to choose to pay their share out of their own wallet directly to finance the military, or could use that money for something else? I suspect, not many. High distribution of wealth means that in order to do anything at mass scale, there has to be consensus and it is much, much harder to convince people to use their money, when you are asking them to draw it out of their own wallet.

Digital wallets count too.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]