Bitcoin made a splash back in its heyday, when its price started climbing, leveraging the hype and promises of an alternative economy. Ferociously waving the flag of a disruptive technology and a true breakthrough in financial operation forwarding, Bitcoin quickly made it to the top of the most hotly debated topics in virtually every industry as countless projects started trying to shove blockchain technologies into every conceivable niche in hopes of hitting gold. The hype did not leave the major powers of industries indifferent as dozens of companies started piggybacking on the minor successes of some projects and pushed for incorporation of their own products and services.
The same line of blockchain usage and its exploitation as a selling point can be traced across the entire history of the technology’s market. Every major corporation had tried at some point to brandish a progressive image by fostering a blockchain-positive attitude and advancing use of the technology throughout its development agenda. Be it Nvidia or Microsoft, they had all formed their own blockchain research divisions, which gobbled up millions of dollars in funding in the search for the Holy Grail of blockchain application. And, of course, such a promising and speculative technology as blockchain could not have passed by unnoticed by such an all-encompassing leviathan as Google.
The parent company behind Google – Alphabet, did its utmost to attract investments for its own brainchild, conceived on the basis of blockchain technology. Tough Google had originally declared that its own blockchain would be launched an a mesmerizing array of services would be deployed on it, what we have at present is a meager shadow of that promise and a poor attempt at saving face by remaining in the information and media frontier with the ongoing use Google Pay as a payment gateway in the blockchain space.
Buy Bitcoin with Google Wallet
In order to buy Bitcoin with Google Wallet, all users need now is to access an exchange and enter the amount of funds they wish to spend on a certain cryptocurrency. Using the CEX io mobile app makes it even easier, since the gateway is connected to virtually all trading venues on the market. Buying cryptocurrencies is no longer a hassle, since convenience was determined to be the key factor in attracting users to blockchain-based services. As it turned out, nobody was actually interested in learning how to use blockchain or the services based on it, since everyone was used to traditional financial gateways. That made it challenging for the ideologists of the blockchain to advance their agendas and convince users to give up fiat in exchange for cryptocurrencies.
But the users were adamant and were on the side of the project developers, seeing cryptocurrencies as little more than instruments for speculation and making a quick buck. Though time proved that it was the super-rich that made the buck in the long run, few actually cared when the majority of the leading pools and liquidity platforms started going bust, leaving average users with little choice but to abandon hopes of Lamborghinis overnight and go back to their nine-to-five jobs.
The same happened to many of the so-called gateway services that offered payment methods bank cards would muster. Ironically, some of the users of these gateways would ask “what is Google Pay?” in the community chat windows, further making it clear that they were in the project solely in expectation of their vaunted Xs. And though many of these services would say that our Google Pay solution is more convenient and accessible, adding a whole plethora of colorful adjectives to the mix, the fact remains that exchange best be conducted on popular and secure platforms.
With their P2P services in shambles and their ability to muster up funds for another projects in tatters, the project leaders, or rather ringleaders, would move on to more lucrative pastures. They could afford to pay for developers of more lackluster applications, but then again, why would they? The internet knows everything, but it can at times turn a blind eye to previous blunders and transgressions under the gauze of a promise of profits. And that is exactly what happened later on.
Examining
A thorough analysis of some of the profiles of such gateway project leaders reveals that they are little more than charlatans, leveraging their social media personas to buy some credibility in the eyes of users they deem gullible. It is true that many of the users who flock to projects upon seeing ads online about immense profit potential can be seen as naïve, but even some of the bigger industry players were often duped into believing well-penned presentations.
And now, as the industry of cryptocurrencies is approaching yet another important milestone in its development, we can only wonder whether there will be a turning point reached, or a repeat of history. However, many experts, or rather speculators, agree on a single important point of note – the cryptocurrency industry is no longer free, and nor is it decentralized. Time has proven that decentralization holds no credibility, since there is no one to blame in case things go sour, which they often do. This means that having a centralized entity governing a project is preferable, as it will act as closure, or as scapegoats, if the project either fails or stops bringing in profits.
A good point to note is that cryptocurrencies are no longer the dominant force that they never really were in the emerging Web3 space. The reason is quite simple – they are volatile and insecure, unreliable and inconvenient to use. Why would someone bother exchanging USDT to their national fiat currency if it takes more than 15 minutes to do that, when a near-instant direct payment using fiat saves a lot of time? This and many other issues, such as lack of interconnectivity and outright piss poor security have paved the way for the decline of cryptocurrencies as a viable alternative to fiat.
It would be foolish to believe that cryptocurrencies ever stood a chance of challenging the traditional system of payments, considering that their combined capitalization never even reached a fraction of that wielded by the US Dollar, or any other national currency. Only time will tell, whether cryptocurrencies have a future as an instrument beyond the trading and speculation arenas, since at present, they are exactly that and nothing more.
