How is crypto used?
Crypto has changed a lot. You could even say it has “grown up”.
What was once seen as a niche interest for tech fans has now become a growing global trend. Governments and traditional banks can no longer ignore it.
Many people globally already use it in their day-to-day lives, whether they are aware of it or not. Think of back-end support for online payments. Your experience is faster and smoother, and you don’t notice that crypto is behind it.
Since 2023, Visa has been using the USDC stablecoin to pay major merchant acquirers like Worldpay and Nuvei1. For cardholders nothing has changed; they still tap a normal Visa card. The crypto part happens in Visa’s treasury or settlement layer. This means that end users do not see the crypto part. They only see that their card works.
So what are some of the other real world uses for crypto? Well, at the time of writing these include:
Dollar payments: Moving money across borders quickly and at low cost. Think of payments that move like an email.
Digital identity: Tools to help people prove who they are online, with more control over their data.
Permanent data storage: Keeping important records resistant to control, loss or censorship.
Financial services: Open marketplaces for trading and lending with public rules.
Compliance and forensics: blockchains are transparent; analysis helps law enforcement trace illicit flows (despite popular belief, illicit flows are a tiny fraction of total activity, because of the transparent nature of blockchains).
Stock and securities trading: means putting traditional assets on a blockchain. These assets include US Treasuries, money-market funds, bonds, and collateral. This allows them to settle faster, be programmable, and be reused in different financial systems. This process is already happening at the infrastructure level. It is one of the fastest-growing uses of crypto by institutions.
Supply-chain traceability and provenance: using blockchain as a shared ledger to track the origin and movement of goods. Records are hard to alter, helping verify authenticity and reduce fraud. Most systems are run by known users and do not use tokens. Instead, they use blockchain to keep data consistent and trustworthy among all parties.
Mobile networking and digital maps: uses tokens to reward people who help build and run real-world infrastructure. This includes things like wireless coverage (Helium) or a decentralized Google Maps (HiveMapper). DePIN allows this to happen without relying on one company. And because many independent operators are involved, these networks are harder to disrupt. Some are already live, but large-scale commercial use is still in its early stages.
These are just some of the current real-world applications for crypto. And the possibilities keep on expanding and evolving.
Footnotes:
1. Visa, Investor Relations News. https://investor.visa.com/news/news-details/2023/Visa-Expands-Stablecoin-Settlement-Capabilities-to-Merchant-Acquirers/default.aspx
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