Lets say crypto completely and utterly replaced fiat. Fiats don't exist anymore. All governments have seen the advantage of using digital currency and have completely changed their fiat into crypto, like dollar to dollar token(obviously not tether). How viable is this? For example anyone can see how much I am holding using the public ledger and track me down and force me into sending them the cryptos I hold. I wanna discuss in reality if cryptos actually replace fiat how life will be and what are the problems we are gonna face and the immediate effects of it.
While it is certainly possible that will happen in the future, the question how will we get there?
From a non-investment perspective, lets focus on 4 main issues:
1) Lack of volatility
3) Acceptance by businesses
2) Acceptance by users
4) Non-interference by governments
1) Lack of volatility is a no-brainer for any successful crypto to be a reliable means of exchange in regions with economic stability and banking.
Sure, we have stablecoins (fiat-backed, gold-backed, basket-backed, algorithmic) serving as a bridge for exchanges, but at present none have enough scale to replace a regular fiat currency (liquidity-wise) nor have the transparent governance mechanisms to resist systemic shocks (trust-wise). Libra, if it works as envisioned might actually work on this front.
2) Use and acceptance by businesses (merchants) is quite a crucial factor often overlooked by our community. P2P transactions, volume and liquidity are great, but if no outlet accepts it, you still need to convert through an intermediary. Payment provider integration is likely to be the case forward here, as accepting on-chain payment is not cost-effective nor scalable to multiple chains (plus connecting to exchange to manage balance sheet). It needs to happen at scale, ruling out small shops as enablers of scale and entering the territory of medium-to-large business. At that level the bottleneck to decision-making process is compliance department and top management. A compelling business reason needs to be presented why they should integrate a new provider, with expected revenue increase. The best way forward here is to support a crypto-payment provider that provides the best service and helping them grow. This can be done by constantly nagging your favourite business to integrate provider XYX (not a specific currency like BTC). This will be a long-term effort and the community really needs to step up on this.
3) This ties in with the previous one. If a business adopts a new payment provider and sees no usage, they will drop it and mark it as a failed experiment. Usage by mainstream users is crucial, generating "sales" volume that can maintain the option compelling. Having a great UX and consumer-friendly is also key here (think of PayPal and their refund protection. If I get scammed I want to contact someone and get my money back. If this is not possible, I'm gonna leave a bad review on the merchant and we all know business LOVE bad reviews).
4) This one is the one we can least influence, but quite important for business acceptance. If governments pass regulation clarifying their stance on cryptoassets (not all are made alike), especially payment-oriented tokens and corresponding tax treatments, this will gradually erase the negative ecosystem connotations and decrease risk of adopting new technology.
Just my 2 cents
Might be wrong though