New Thoughts on On-Chain Payments and On-Chain Shopping

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

Previously, I always thought:

What’s the point of stablecoin payments?

I use WeChat and Alipay just fine, buying anything is convenient, why do I need crypto payments?

What advantages does on-chain shopping have over current online shopping?

I couldn't see any.

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

Most stablecoin payments occur within the Ethereum ecosystem, so the more developed this area becomes, the better it is for the long-term price of Ethereum.

Certain AI agents in the Virtual ecosystem focus on on-chain shopping (like Byte for food purchases and Flyte for flight tickets). If they become popular, they could drive the entire Virtual ecosystem and boost the prices of tokens like Virtual.

That’s all.

However, in recent days, after watching a television interview with the Trump family and considering the trading difficulties faced by small vendors in Yiwu, along with a common problem in the crypto ecosystem, my views on the above two areas have changed significantly.

In the Trump family interview, Trump's son recounted their family's experience of being harassed by several major banks, being forced to close their accounts. This made them realize the disasters caused by the rampant abuse of power by traditional centralized banks, prompting them to fully support the crypto ecosystem.

If the issues faced by the Trump family seem a bit distant for ordinary people, then the trading difficulties encountered by small vendors in Yiwu are a problem we have frequently heard about in recent years:

These small vendors often find their accounts inexplicably blocked during transactions, with even a small law enforcement agency in a third or fourth-tier city able to block their accounts for various reasons. This causes great trouble and inconvenience for these low-margin businesses struggling on the brink of profit and loss. This has forced these vendors to start trying to use stablecoins for trade to avoid such hassles.

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

How to cash out crypto assets into RMB?

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

All of the above issues can be summarized in one point:

As long as it involves fiat currency transactions, traditional centralized institutions have various ways to set obstacles at every stage. If these centralized institutions generally adhere to the bottom line, it usually won’t affect our lives, but if certain institutions abuse their power, then fiat currency holders are almost like fish on a chopping board.

Why do we have to use fiat currency?

Because in our daily lives, from buying cars and houses, investing in education, to using water, electricity, and daily necessities, we are constantly using fiat currency.

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

However, if all transactions involving fiat currency in real life could be conducted using crypto assets, without permission and no longer subject to arbitrary harassment, the world would be vastly different.

From this perspective, on-chain payments and on-chain shopping based on crypto assets become extremely significant.

In fact, many people have proposed such a vision before, and I have read too many articles on this topic. But at that time, I didn’t have such a strong feeling as today, so I never seriously thought about its implied significance.

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

In this light, the potential and significance of the stablecoin-based payment ecosystems that many projects are striving to build are extraordinary.

Once this ecosystem is formed, holders of crypto assets can almost completely free themselves from the constraints of traditional financial institutions. Once a country establishes such an ecosystem, that country will become a paradise for crypto asset holders—where they can live freely without the troubles and constraints of fiat currency.

In fact, we already have a similar example: in our daily lives, we can almost get by using only WeChat or Alipay. If it weren't for salaries being directly deposited into bank accounts, we would hardly need to interact with banks or cash in our daily lives.

But this is still subject to certain limitations.

Once this ecosystem based on crypto assets is established, we will completely break free from these current limitations.

Of course, in the future, we may face new restrictions and regulations in such a crypto ecosystem, but I believe a new ecosystem will provide us with more freedom and more protection. At the very least, it can greatly curb certain abuses of power and troublesome situations in the existing ecosystem.

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