Whenever crypto has a dull period for a month, always someone says the same sentence: “Do not worry, the real-world applications will come soon.” But when you observe the citizens in economies with weak fiat currencies, what is posted on the internet gets very untidy. The basic idea sounds like something positive, but how things really happen is not so good.
In Reddit discussions, you’ll read posts from people living with double-digit inflation stating things like: “I dream to get my salary paid in USDT, but rent is not possible through this,” or “For my energy bills, they still prefer cash.” People want to run away from falling fiat, but there remain the usual barriers. It is because the shopkeepers don’t allow crypto as payment, banks check every single on/off-ramp transaction with suspicion, and exchanging the stablecoins for domestic money leads to very high spreads.
There are issues of instability too. An individual in Nigeria or Argentina paying for food using cryptocurrencies is not thinking about decentralization. Their main concern is how fast the value could move when they are at the checkout and at the cashier. For this reason, most go for stablecoins, which leads to other issues like liquidity. P2P markets show lots of activity if you check on paper, but you see people reporting problems like buyers leaving deals, making low offers, or delaying money release.
Another topic getting discussed is internet stability. Using crypto for paying seems like advanced technology, but suddenly your electricity breaks down or the mobile network becomes slow. You cannot easily say to your landlord, “wait, my crypto wallet has to connect.”
Whenever crypto gets more adopted, it’s in most cases just minor uses — for example, buying mobile recharge, digital gift cards, or sending money to a friend. It’s not applied for rent, or taxes, or medical expenses.
Crypto does provide help for certain individuals dealing with inflation, but the dream of “complete on-chain living” is still much farther than what the real system can offer. In most low-income economies, crypto definitely is not too late. The thing is, it just does not work for everything yet.
