You can use them to escape monetary debasement, or to send money halfway across the world in a fraction of a second, or even to trade oil futures on the weekend, when traditional markets are closed. And yet, almost 18 years after Bitcoin’s inception, few people actually use them in their day-to-day life. Almost nobody in America directly opens up a stablecoin app to pay for groceries.
We all prefer the cards issued by our bank. The crypto world still feels like a completely separate ecosystem; a laboratory of innovation and speculation, yes, but not a practical solution to day-to-day financial tasks, the way that banking is. The crypto sphere has long been aware of this gap (thus the fixation with mainstream adoption).
But for a long time, the gap felt tolerable because industry leaders spoke about replacing banks altogether. It’s now clear to everyone that this isn’t going to happen. We’re not going to convince the vast majority of the population to abandon their bank accounts and start self-custodying their digital currencies and assets.
Instead of trying to lure people away from their banks, the digital asset industry should focus on integrating within infrastructure that is already used and trusted. Debit cards, payroll deposits, merchant points of sale, mortgages, insurances, stocks—you name it. There aren’t many financial instruments that wouldn’t benefit from blockchain technology.
Put differently, the two tracks, banking and crypto, need to stop running parallel to each other, and really mix together. Soon, the distinction won’t be between banks and crypto firms, but between the companies that have properly integrated the capabilities of both, and those who haven’t. Why are banks so durable?
Because our lives revolve around a small set of financial responsibilities. We have to receive our paychecks, pay our bills and taxes, send money to relatives, collect insurance, manage our savings. Banks are in the middle of all of that.
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