Recently, I've been of the opinion that the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies and assets will only happen when businesses realize the value it offers and are able to leverage it to scale.
Crypto is offering a new premise to the majority of what we are already frank with. Money, banking, savings, investment, tasks and rewards, and the list goes on.
Difference?
The premise is new, but the goal isn't quite alien to those of the previous structures.
The idea of banking was to build a safe environment for savings and investment for individuals(at least that's how it is always marketed), but this turned into a watchtower and cage for the people and their wealth.
Crypto, with the aid of blockchain technology offers just the same but with leverage on DLT and token incentivization as a means to maintain network sovereignty and participant's integrity.
Digitalization births opportunities
The interesting fact about technology within the digital landscape is that it brings "Interest-bearing" tools to the table, extending a hand of opportunity to the few that can read the room and the handwritings on the wall.
To understand what it is we are actually dealing with, here is some research data that shows us "tiny to large" details of the transformation of finance and commerce happening through digitalization.
Firstly, trillions of dollars are being processed via digital business channels. Estimately, $8 trillion was being spent in 2022 alone.
Secondly, while digital payments solutions are making waves, many businesses and individuals are still hung on to traditional cash payments methods for reasons best known individually. That said, this clinging to cash does have its disadvantages, asides the clear exposure to physical wealth threat and the economic effects on fiat particularly, businesses suffer extremely high costs on paper-based payments.
It is reported that about $3 trillion is estimated to be tied up in a business's outstanding accounts receivable (AR) in the U.S. The average business has 24% of its monthly revenue held up in AR, payment terms, or trade credit.
One would ask, why are people still clung to cash?
For individuals, it's most likely the fears associated with the digital ecosystem, cash is private to some extent when compared to the use of traditional digital payment networks.
In addition to this, most of these payments softwares and companies have incredibly insane terms of services that just throws off lots of red flags as the signs of "high individual risk" is perceived in the use of these services.
The entry of crypto payments
Crypto payments would solve the majority of the flaws of both traditional cash payments and digital payments.
Looking at privacy concerns, whilst crypto transactions are public, transacting addresses are really just strings of letters and numbers that do not expose who is transacting at any time.
In addition, privacy coins and several anonymizing tools have been developed to add an extra layer of privacy enforcement to crypto payments.
With digital payments projected to reach $11.29 trillion in 2026 and digital wallets users(which makes up 49% of preferred payment premise for online shoppers) expected to reach 5.2 billion globally in 2026, crypto is handed an opportunity to offer its value to the world as a financial network.
With borderless payments, interoperable networks, low cost, control over assets, privacy, flexibility, speed and potentially even incentives, crypto's value as a payment method is non-dismissible. The move made by PayPal is clearly at the realization of this as the payment provider undoubtedly intends to maintain its influence as the most leveraged payment software in the world.
The true definition of "ease in trade" is actualized in the design and functionalities of cryptocurrencies and it's only a matter of time before we find timely value flows within the ecosystem due to day-to-day business trades.