I'm an everyday user. One of my major uses is to send stablecoins to family back in latin america, and ETH/BTC. They can get it and use right away within seconds and paid almost no fee compared to traditional means
I think blockchain would have been exponentially more useful in 1999. Alas, it’s not 1999.
Worked on teams looking at it for a few interesting use cases, but in every case we prototyped, the increasing ubiquity of network signal makes alternatives better.
Many of the use cases that seem ideal for blockchain really need just need digital signatures.
It’s cool tech, but more niche than the hype cycle made it out to be.
Blockchain, or cryptocurrency? Be aware, those are not the same technologies. Blockchain is working fine on its own. There are some projects and usages which are predating the cryptocurrency-terms. The versioning-system git might be the most well known project with this bubble here. But it's also disputed how blockchainy git is. So to name something else, the smart home standard Matter is using a blockchain for managing their certifications or legitimated devices, something like that.
With cryptocurrency on the other side, the most "legit" usage case I've seen so far, is hybrid-NFTs, from DC Tracing Cards. Where you get physical cards, and an NFT alongside it. Not sure how successful or scammy this is, but considering trading cards are an established semi-legit business, I would say this kinda counts as real world.
Bitcoin, store of value. Don't underestimate this itself as the main utility.
Sure, it has quarter to quarter volatility, but year on year, given the 4 year halvening cycles, it is proven to be a tremendous store of value.
Mostly thanks to built-in scarcity, dollar-printing and nothing else.
There are multiple use cases besides the obvious/primary ones of being an alternative means of permissionless value transfer and enabling novel distributed trading instruments (DEFI).
Example: Figure (providing home equity loans) used provenance chain for backend functions such as origination, securitization, and lifecycle management. Many of the "business" use cases are in these opaque areas such as settlements.
When you see knee-jerk comments “tHeRe’s nO uSe CaSe” it’s understandable that most people don’t know what they don’t know about the backend of finance. Yes, there’s a lot of bullshit in the space, and there’s also a lot of valid infrastructure being built. It’s not going away.
A company called Vectorspace Biosciences/Vectorspace AI’s revenue and technology model is based largely on crypto/blockchain. They’re focused on helping to facilitate scientific discovery through what’s essentially AI data analysis, so knowing when and why data changed is critical. Blockchain and their token are used as part of their dataset provenance and security pipeline to help keep track of dataset modifications and history. It also acts as a licensing mechanism, so that tiered API access is granted based on how much of the token is held in the user’s wallet.
Disclaimer: I’m an investor.
If you're genuinely curious, here's the "latest" book on the topic: https://readwriteown.com
If you search for Chris Dixon in the podcast sphere you can find a lot of interviews (to promote the book) and get the digest in 1h-ish.
Ethereum is doing about 1m+ transactions per day. Don't know what for, but its been fairly consistent.
https://ycharts.com/indicators/ethereum_transactions_per_day
In Germany, all cash registers run their local blockchain to verify for the tax authorities that the register was not manipulated.
Slightly less libertarian use than what some blockchain enthusiasts are envisioning, but a real use case.
https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technische_Sicherheitseinric... (sorry, can only find German info right now)
currency exchange service.
hold enough amounts of main cryptocurrencies (such as btc, eth, bch, usdc, usdt) and you can be a market maker making a few bps per transaction.
Does Certificate Transparency count?
FedNow offers instant transfer of fiat at extremely low cost (pennies per transaction) that crypto typically can't match.
Store of value is a narrative which became dominant in the libertarian fueled Bitcoin community. There is so much more happening: - Anonymous and bordeless payments, digital cash, the whole point of Bitcoin in the first place - DeFi, basically fully FOSS, permissionless trustless financial system where people can take loans, get interest on savings, trade, etc - Identity, being able to verify reputation and decentralized naming like ENS - Space for artists and pseudo-artists to serve a niche but sizable clientele of NFT buyers - Funding public goods, regenerative finance employed by crypto communities is probably the best way of funding FOSS I have seen - DAOs and coordination mechanisms for decentralized communities ...
There are none. Period.
I sold all of my cryptocurrency about 2 years ago because there was no utility to any of the coins I held. When I was younger I held Bitcoin, then when I grew up I invested in ETH and Chainlink. I waited for years, and nothing happened to the cryptocurrency scene at-large that pushed the needle in it's direction. It was a strictly-inferior way to store my money, when I used it.
Considering the popularity of "custodial wallets" today, I might argue that scamming less-intelligent people is the primary business strategy around crypto.