“Crypto has not yet solved the economics of serving casual users, and the attempt to do so is actively degrading the product for the users who fund the operation today.“ Image credit:
Veronica Cestari/CCN
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Key Takeaways
Crypto may not have an adoption problem, but an expectation problem around retail banking.
Stablecoin remittances generate far lower fees than speculative crypto trading models.
Crypto-native users often want self-custody, transparency, and direct blockchain access, not simplified banking apps.
Blockchain infrastructure works best where traditional finance remains slow, costly, or inaccessible.
The crypto industry has gone all in on the assumption that mainstream retail adoption is the destination. It is an assumption so widely shared that it has stopped being questioned, and so deeply embedded in investor decks and conference keynotes that it has started to feel like fact.
After the memecoin cycle ended and apps found themselves holding large stablecoin balances, the narrative pivoted sharply toward replacing banks. Features followed that logic.
Virtual cards, yield products, on-ramp and off-ramp tools, and cashback mechanics were rolled out to mirror the narrative shift, and wallets began to look like neobanks.
The goal of serving the everyday Western consumer became the industry’s shared ambition, and a significant portion of the capital raised over the past several years has been deployed to pursue it.
Nobody stopped to ask whether that ambition was grounded in reality, because too many people needed to believe it was.
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Speculation Fees Cannot Sustain Mass Retail Finance
The economics of this pivot deserve more scrutiny than they typically receive.
Competing with Revolut, Robinhood, or Capital One on their own terms means competing with companies that have spent over a decade building seamless, trusted products with massive distribution advantages. That is a steep hill to climb before you even get to the numbers.
Crypto’s revenue model was built on charging around 1% on volatile asset trades, a fee structure pioneered by memecoin launchpads such as Pump.fun. When someone exits a position at up to a 30% gain or loss, a 1% fee is unremarkable.
That model generated an estimated $3 billion in revenue across the Solana ecosystem alone in 2025. It funded the next phase of ambition, and it created the impression that crypto platforms had the financial firepower to compete in mainstream consumer finance.
The problem is that the flagship retail use case, stablecoin remittances, operates on an entirely different fee structure.
At the platform level, those transactions generate somewhere between 1 and 14 basis points, compared to the 100 basis points typically charged on meme coin launchpad trades.
To replicate $3 billion in revenue through remittances alone, a platform would need to process roughly $600 billion to $3 trillion in volume, depending on the fee tier.
To put that in context, $600 billion represents approximately 17% of total US credit card spend in 2024, or France’s entire GDP in the same year.
The gap between the industry’s ambition and its viable economics has rarely been stated plainly, but the numbers make it visible.
Power Users and Mainstream Consumers Want Different Products
The economic problem compounds a product problem that the industry has consistently misdiagnosed. Making crypto apps retail-friendly requires removing the features that power users value most.
Hiding wallet addresses, adding Google login, stripping out unfamiliar language, and removing QR codes sends a clear signal to the top 1% of users, who account for more than 50% of most platforms’ revenue, that the product is no longer built for them.
These are people who came to crypto because they wanted access to the underlying technology, self-custody, on-chain transparency, and direct interaction with decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.
They know what they are signing, understand the cryptography involved, and deliberately chose this product over a neobank. Every step toward mainstream accessibility is a step away from the audience that funds the operation.
The industry has treated this as a UX problem when it is a strategic contradiction.
Two dynamics have made this contradiction harder to ignore. Western retail consumers already have adequate financial products.
For someone with access to Revolut or a Capital One mobile app, the incremental value of a self-custodial crypto wallet is low.
The product has to be dramatically better, on familiar terms, to displace something that already works. That is a very difficult bar.
Stablecoin Adoption Grows Faster in Emerging Markets
The users who do have a genuine need for crypto infrastructure are concentrated in markets where access to stable currency and affordable cross-border transfers remains a structural problem, in emerging markets across Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America, and adoption in those markets is growing.
The economics, however, are structurally different. Monetizing those users at the scale needed to justify the investment is a separate and largely unsolved challenge.
The honest summary is that the markets where crypto is needed are hard to monetize, and the markets that are easiest to monetize largely do not need it.
“The gap between the industry’s ambition and its viable economics has rarely been stated plainly, but the numbers make it visible.” | Image source: Vidor Gencel
Visa and Mastercard Reveal Blockchain’s Real Value
The entry of institutional players like Visa and Mastercard into the crypto space is frequently cited as validation of the mainstream adoption thesis, but the interpretation deserves more care.
These companies are using blockchain as a settlement optimization tool, reducing back-office wire transfer costs through consortium infrastructure.
That is a genuine and meaningful application, but it should not be read as a signal that mass consumer retail adoption is imminent.
What it actually demonstrates is that crypto infrastructure is useful for specific, well-defined financial operations, reducing real costs for sophisticated participants who already understand what they are buying. That is a different and more modest claim than the industry tends to make from it.
The risk of continuing to chase mainstream retail adoption is misallocated capital and eroded trust among the users who already matter.
Platforms that reshape their products around a user base that has not arrived yet risk alienating the one they already have, with no guarantee that the new audience will prove monetizable.
The result is a product that serves neither group well: too complicated for casual retail users and too compromised for the crypto-native audience that built the platform’s revenue in the first place.
Crypto Infrastructure Works Best When Solving Structural Problems
The industry is missequencing its retail ambition. Crypto has not yet solved the economics of serving casual users, and the attempt to do so is actively degrading the product for the users who fund the operation today.
The more productive frame is about problem fit. Crypto infrastructure has a demonstrated, defensible role wherever legacy financial systems are structurally slow or exclusionary, such as cross-border settlement, markets where stable currency access is unreliable, and back-office operations where blockchain reduces real costs at scale. Visa and Mastercard’s blockchain activity reflects this logic.
They are using crypto to solve a specific, well-defined problem at a lower cost, and they are not pretending it is something more than that.
Builders who are honest about that distinction have a clearer path than those chasing a mainstream consumer who already has adequate alternatives.
The question worth asking, before the next product roadmap gets locked in, is whether what is being built right now solves a problem for someone who genuinely has no better option. That is a narrower ambition than the industry likes to claim, and a more durable one.
Disclaimer:
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the article belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to CCN, its management, employees, or affiliates. This content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice.
About the Author
Vidor Gencel
Vidor Gencel is the co-founder and co-CEO of Solflare, the leading next-gen financial OS on Solana. Vidor is a veteran software engineer, having received a Master’s degree in computer science and a PhD in software engineering. Vidor’s interest in blockchain stretches back to its early days, having purchased his first Bitcoin in 2010 and used both his Master’s and PhD theses to explore computer science and software engineering through the lens of blockchain and cryptocurrency. Vidor worked as a blockchain engineer and chief technology officer before co-founding Solflare in 2021. Vidor leads all technical initiatives in Solflare and is directly responsible for the technology used to develop the platform, overseeing the technical direction of product development from the outset to ensure continuous product innovation.
