In a Twitter post on Aug. 24, Buterin explained that it`s not just about censorship resistance, but about digital currencies, as well as [excellent" ease when it comes to international commerce, charity and even domestic payments.
People continue to underestimate the advantages of digital currency payments, not even because of censorship resistance, but because they are more convenient.
A huge boost to international commerce and public philanthropy, and sometimes even domestic payments.
Globally, the choice of digital currencies in payments has been increasing. According to a July report by the data platform PYMNTS called "Payments Digital Currencies," 85% of companies surveyed with annual revenues of more than $1 billion said they choose encrypted payments to find and acquire new customers.
The availability of crypto savings cards is still growing rapidly. Qianan recently partnered with MasterCard to launch a prepaid card for Argentines. Many cards, such as Wirex, even reward users with crypto cashbacks for card payments, and support several major cryptocurrencies, fiat currencies, and attached consumer ATMs to get cash.
As someone at Vitalik pointed out, digital currencies are also particularly effective for international money transfers and charitable donations. Traditionally, when fiat currencies are used, international payments can take a long time to process and result in huge costs. The Ukrainian war is a good example, and it's useful in this respect. Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted on August 18 that only the non-profit and activist group "Support Ukraine" raised $54 million.
However, not everyone is optimistic about using digital currencies as a payment method. Common objections include price adjustment, convenience, and regulatory risk, as well as some digital currencies such as BTC and Ethereum.
While it may vary, the Bitcoin blockchain processes roughly 5 transactions per second (TPS) at an average cost of $0.819 as of August 24th, and Ethereum currently processes about $29.3 TPS at an average cost of $1.57. Visa, on the other hand, claims to process 24,000 transactions per second, with fees ranging from 1.4% to 2.5% per transaction.
Related: Ukraine Shows Real People the Value Digital Currencies Offer
The development of Lightning Network may be based on the two-layer solution of the Bitcoin blockchain, BTC lags behind the TPS solution, and Ethereum has been looking for two-level induction technologies, such as ZK-rollups, to significantly reduce costs and processing times.
Digital currency stablecoins, designed to be pegged to another asset such as the U.S. dollar, have also become a popular medium of exchange, especially in emerging economies.
