Bitcoin Pizza Day comes once a year on May 22nd, and it’s a good day for crypto retailers to offer deals, and for crypto spenders to stomach the often hassling experience of crypto checkout. “Hassling” may not be a strong enough word. Something like “harrowing” might better describe the processes that some go through for the sake of spending crypto.
Hodl On, Why Spend Crypto At All?
There are those who advise against spending crypto at all. It’s all novel and rare and bound to go up in price, many reckon. But the future of cryptocurrency may depend on people’s willingness to use it. State-backed crypto alternatives are emerging which will ultimately shake the foundation of the blockchain world. Companies building products designed to consume blockchain resources and accept cryptocurrency may well be expected to build products for state-sponsored digital currencies, as well.
The prospect of fiat digital currencies should be of grave concern to Bitcoin and blockchain enthusiasts. Without much of a hold on the online shopping industry, Bitcoin and others will no longer be the only game in town. People demonstrate a multibillion-dollar willingness to use fiat dollars and yuan at places like Amazon and Alibaba. The digital dollar will only make crypto’s climb to eventual dominance all the more steep, if not more doubtful and onerous.
To combat this, perhaps more ‘Bitcoin Pizza Days’ are in order. Maybe every Friday, companies encourage people to spend cryptocurrency.
While companies like Purse have incentivized people to shop with Bitcoin over the years, a regular symphony of companies offering nice perks for spending crypto will probably yield good results. If nothing else, it will give those of us with crypto wallets reason to pull them out.
Perhaps the future of blockchain is in non-financial aspects, like gaming. If you feel this is true, then you probably don’t care about the lack of widespread crypto use.
But for those who consider it to be a valuable asset, and certainly to have the components of a currency, doesn’t it concern you how little crypto is actually used, compared to fiat, in online transactions?
A $3 Trillion Dollar Pizza
Global ecommerce was over $3 trillion in 2019. The entire market capitalization of all cryptocurrency at the time of writing is around $265 billion. The numbers would likely be dramatically different if crypto were capturing a significantly larger share of the world’s ecommerce. But things, at present, simply aren’t designed that way, and the question now is whether they will be in time to compete with the obviously strong prospect of Central Bank Digital Currencies.
There are plenty for whom the CBDCs simply don’t enter their thinking. They believe Bitcoin to still be superior, even in a world where people can hold their cash on their phone without having to rely on a private mining network. Perhaps Bitcoin is superior in other ways, but the whole scene would be better off to build truly superior experiences, from online shopping to holding and saving cryptocurrencies.
And then are those that will argue that we already have these. Well, if we already have a perfect and superior system, then why isn’t it the most used and popular one as well?
