On-ramp woes and the phantom volume
Remember that initial wave of excitement around stablecoin on-ramps for smaller merchants? I got a bit too eager to capture a piece of that action, investing some serious time and dev resources into a widget for micro-transactions, thinking I was ahead of the curve. Turns out, the volume just wasn't there for truly tiny payments. People still prefer established rails for their $5 coffee, and the friction, even with stablecoins, was just enough of a deterrent for everyday use. A classic case of building it and hoping they would come, only to find the 'they' were actually just a handful of early adopters with niche needs, not the teeming masses I envisioned. Should've done more market validation on actual transaction size, not just theoretical adoption.
That's a really insightful observation. It highlights the challenge of market adoption even when the tech is sound; sometimes the established user behavior for small transactions is just too deeply entrenched.