The Problem
The CEO's firsthand experience.
People have started discovering all the great benefits of blockchain, specially for its capability to do cheaper, secured, real-time cross border transactions, hence the use of cryptocurrency. However, right now, cryptocurrency is mostly used as a form of investment and doesn't live up to its original design, where you can do Peer-to-peer payments in purchase your needs or wants. While it stores a value, at the end of the day, the owner would have to spend such asset.
If an individual wants to spend his cryptocurrency,
The reality now being experienced by 300m+ cryptocurrency wallet users across the world, they will have to go through several tedious steps of transfer.
Firsthand experience of pain, after becoming a profitable investor or grew your capital in cryptocurrency, finally you will have a money that you can spend on. But you will be facing a huge of barrier of several steps before actually making it a fiat that you can utilize for purchasing. Doing this may mean a loss of time between few minutes up to almost an hour that may cause anxiety in-between and incredible inconvenience. This is the reality of regular experience. Would this be attractive for the next users?
The summary of the problem here is that, at the end of the day, cryptocurrency holds a purchasing value for real world acquisition but for an individual to do that, he has no choice but to go through the inconvenience.
If businesses wanted to capitalize on cryptocurrency,
they would need to create a blockchain address. Not a bank account, not an email, not a mobile number, but a blockchain address.
For them to achieve this, they are left with two options with different pros and cons:
Centralized accounts through centralized exchanges
Easy to use and onboard, Web2 Auth
Does not own the custody of assets
Cheaper Fees
Limited supported coins listed
Can Forgot Password
Numerous bankrupt exchange cases
Decentralized wallet through Softwallet
Owns the custody of assets
Cannot change and forget keys
Access to DeFi
Lack of business usecase tailor fit. Limited to send, receive, store
Open to all on-chain assets
Will be exposed to volatile assets such as meme coins
Let's say we have 2 scenarios using both options.
Scenario 1:
When a business owner utilizes a centralized wallet, he can benefit from easy self-onboarding because he can log in through Web 2 authentications such as Google Sign In. However, the cons can be the risk of not owning the custody of your assets, specially when an unfortunate event happens to the exchange, which has happened multiple times already. Also the restraint of having few options of coins supported by the exchange and the underlying gas fees underneath it, specially when it's a transaction made on Ethereum Chain that costs 10$+, an amount that won't make sense for the majority of businesses. And it defeats the purpose of blockchain technology since it won't be able to connect to DApps.
Firsthand experience of pain, when somebody had only a few options to pay a business accepting crypto, and happened to be USDC is his choice of payment form, however because of the limitation, both the customer and business would need an ETH amounting to 10$+ to be sent by the customer, and to be moved out by the business. Having a total loss of 20$+ on that transaction alone. Is it good?
The summary of the problem here is that, account convenience compromises the whole purpose of Blockchain. Assets stored or owned by you in centralized exchanges are just transfers of data.
Scenario 2:
When a business owner creates a wallet address with the use of a softwallet, he will be given a wallet address, private key, and seed phrases of his account, which means he will benefit from full custody of his assets while also carrying full responsibility for its security. Plus, this kind of wallet infrastructure does not offer change or forgotten keys in case of loss or compromise. Compromise is the worst part, because the only cue for this is when your funds are already gone, nothing else before. While being on the blockchain allows you to be exposed to all on-chain tokens, it becomes a disadvantage when customers are paying using a recently created token that is prone to volatility. Those 3 are among the top concerns for businesses that would take this path.
Firsthand experience of pain, when you, as a business owner, that has different set of employees that would require specific access to your account, such as account management or sales payment issuance, you will need to share your private keys which is something that you can never change anymore unless you ditch your account and just create a new one, which will also mean a waste of immutable transaction records. And with more people having access to your keys, you will have no idea who is causing unauthorized transactions. The worst part is when somebody pays a business owner $100 worth of new token that turn into $1 by the next morning. This is the reality. Would you still opt for this path?
The summary of the problem here is that, self-custody and access to full on-chain capabilities are also double-edge sword that may risk your business.
Despite all the benefits we all know about blockchain and its capability to do cheaper, secured, real-time cross border payments, we can all agree that both of these scenarios mentioned above, either way, become a huge barrier for businesses to fully embrace and put their presence on the blockchain so they can start capitalizing on this blue ocean market and grow their customer base cross-borders.
Should we keep it this way? Inaction would threaten the original usecase of cryptocurrency, which is "currency" as a form of payment or transfer of value and not just an investment.
It happens to be the solution of Altswitch, which can solve both the experience of a customer by reducing several tedious steps to 1 step and less than a minute experience and for a business owner to have the wallet infrastructure that would tailor fit his business operations so he can be exposed and capitalize on blockchain market without worries into
one single step.
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