New thinking about on-chain payments and on-chain shopping

In the crypto ecosystem, I have long been very indifferent to two areas: one is stablecoin payments, and the other is on-chain shopping.

Previously, I always thought:

What is the stablecoin payment?

I use WeChat Alipay well, it is convenient to buy anything, why do I need encrypted payment?

Are there any advantages to on-chain shopping over online shopping now?

I can't tell at all.

Since the beginning of this year, my view of these two areas has changed slightly. Not because my views have fundamentally changed, but purely because I think it may be closely related to my interests:

the vast majority of stablecoin payments occur in the Ethereum ecosystem, so the more developed this field is, the better it is for Ethereum's currency price in the long run.

Some AI Agents in the Virtual ecosystem focus on on-chain shopping (such as Byte for buying food and Flyte for buying air tickets), and if they become popular, they can drive the entire Virtual ecosystem and drive the price of Virtual and other coins.

That's all.

But in the past few days, after watching a TV interview with the Trump family and the transaction difficulties encountered by small traders in Yiwu, and thinking of a common problem in the crypto ecosystem, my views on the above two areas have changed a lot.

In that TV interview with the Trump family, Trump's son recounted his family's experience of being forced to cancel their accounts by several major banks. This shows the disaster brought to people by traditional centralized banks when they abuse their power unscrupulously, and makes them painfully turn to supporting the crypto ecosystem.

If the problems reflected by the Trump family are a bit far away for us ordinary people, then the transaction difficulties encountered by small merchants in Yiwu are a problem we have often heard in recent years:

these small traders are often inexplicably blocked when trading, and a small law enforcement agency in a third- or fourth-tier city or even a remote city can block their accounts for some reason. This has brought great trouble and inconvenience to these merchants who operate with low profits and struggle on the profit and loss line. This has forced these merchants to try to trade with stablecoins to avoid this trouble.

Seeing these cases, I think of the most common problem encountered by participants in the crypto ecosystem:

how to cash out crypto assets into RMB?

According to our country's law, this is illegal.

All of these problems boil down to one point:

when it comes to fiat currency transactions, traditional centralized institutions have various ways to put obstacles in various ways. If these centralized institutions stick to the bottom line, it will generally not affect our lives, but if some institutions abuse their power, then fiat currency holders are almost living fish on the board.

Why do we have to use fiat currency?

Because in our daily lives, we use legal currency everywhere, from buying a car and a house, investing in education, to water, electricity, firewood, rice, oil and salt.

Without fiat currency, we simply cannot survive in the real world.

However, if all transactions involving fiat currency in real life could be conducted with crypto assets, without permission and without unprovoked difficulties, the world would be very different.

From this perspective, the significance of on-chain payments and on-chain shopping based on crypto assets is very important.

In fact, many people have mentioned this vision before, and I have read such articles too many times. But I didn't feel it as strongly as I do today, so I never seriously thought about its implicit meaning.

But looking at it now, the feeling is very different.

From this point of view, the potential and significance of the stablecoin-based payment ecosystem that many projects are trying to build are extraordinary.

Once this ecosystem is formed, holders of crypto assets can almost completely break free from the shackles of traditional financial institutions. Once a country builds such an ecosystem, that country will become a paradise for crypto asset holders--------- where crypto asset holders can live freely without the troubles and fetters of fiat currency.

In fact, we now have a similar example: our daily life is almost enough to use WeChat or Alipay. If it weren't for the fact that the salary was sent directly to the bank card, we would hardly need to touch the bank or cash in our daily lives.

But this is still subject to certain limitations.

Once this ecosystem based on crypto assets is formed, we will completely get rid of these current restrictions.

Of course, in the future, we may have new restrictions and new regulations in such a crypto ecosystem, but I believe that a new ecosystem will give us more freedom and more protection. At the very least, some abuses of power and trouble in the existing ecology can be greatly restrained.

Therefore, on-chain payments and on-chain shopping based on crypto assets bring us not only commercial benefits, but more importantly, give us new freedoms and rights protections.