When I first came across Cryptoland I thought it was just a speculative investment, not too dissimilar to stocks and shares and the idea of real world utilisation was far from my mind. Maybe I bought to much into the legendary pizza story that is a cautionary tale and a promise of acquiring wealth. I have come to realise that for any crypto to have any value it must have an absolute real world use – otherwise it is a meaningless meme and not much better than a Ponzi that can be pumped and dumped. I am increasingly growing my portfolio based on this real world premise, but still make some howlers. For example I backed BAND over CHAINLINK and certainly for now that looks like a terrible choice.

So today I am going to look at how crypto is utilised in the real world.

Cryptocurrency can be used to pay for goods and services, including product checking in the supply chain. With many businesses now accepting BitCoin, Ethereum, or StableCoins for purchases ranging from coffee to electronics and it is ideal for cross-border transfers. Ironically, while Crypto struggles to challenge traditional banks primarily because of lack of adoption and gas fees that same crypto enables instant international payments with lower fees when compared to those same traditional banks. Additionally, and getting back to the original dream of crypto (unbanking ourselves), many Decentralised Finance (DeFi) Platforms allow for the lending, borrowing, and earning of interest without banks and crypto debit cards and reward programmes integrate tokens into our daily spending which further blurs the line between the banks and real crypto utilisation. Hence, in these situations it behaves in many ways just like fiat. This is all underpinned though blockchain transparency and the operation of smart contracts which automates the whole process. Furthermore, the tokenisation of assets only adds to the value of the crypto we are holding or which is circulating in the real world.

For content creators crypto can facilitate worthwhile micropayments on a peer to peer basis and can used to support NFT infrastructure, but the less said about NFTs the better in my view (those of you who know me know I am not a fan).

To balance things out I have to mention that while integrating crypto into the real world offers a lot of advantages such as speed, global access, reduced fees, transparency and innovation it is not without its challenges. Volatility, regulatory uncertainty, scams,  and limited mainstream adoption are among the most significant. It reminds me of the meme or story (I can’t remember which to be honest) in which those who know crypto have the following response (here is my meme or one that is a remade!)

Or what the mainstream think.

So, in short, crypto isn’t just speculation—it’s already embedded in payments, finance, logistics, and digital culture. The challenge is scaling adoption while balancing regulation and risk.

As always stay safe and well my friends.