Beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum: Why the Internet Economy Still Hasn’t Been Fixed

Since the rise to stardom of Bitcoin in mainstream culture, and shortly thereafter of Ethereum (though on a much smaller scale), crypto and blockchain enthusiasts around the world have been monitoring closely how these projects would transform the digital economy, and ways of transacting online. One can safely say that Bitcoin has definitely succeeded in permitting decentralized payments between users from occurring safely and repeatedly, and this since 2008, meaning it has withstood the test of time thus far, strengthening its authenticity from a security and integrity perspective.

And given that it has a daily trading volume of $27.57 billion USD¹ at the time of writing, Bitcoin has undoubtedly made its mark on the global economy as a currency capable of being traded without the need for banks or any centralized entities.

Ethereum has also found success in its own regard, with a daily trading volume of $14 billion USD² at the time of writing. Thanks to its pioneering use of blockchain for dApps, transforming it into a platform for decentralized applications rather than just monetary transactions, it has also made its mark on the global economy, though in a different capacity. Suffice to say that both these projects have left a heavy footprint in the blockchain and crypto spaces, becoming trailblazers for other projects to follow down the road to a new, decentralized technological reality in the 21st century.

But what if we take a step back, zoom out a little bit, and escape the crypto bubble to look at the bigger perspective? To replace the talk of nonces, cryptography and ledgers, for e-commerce checkout carts, monthly SaaS subscriptions and Facebook authentication. In reality, how has Bitcoin and Ethereum impacted the internet economy as a whole? Has the average web user been affected in their daily rituals, enhancing their experience significantly, or even at all? This might be a controversial take, but one can argue that not at all!

For one, most e-commerce websites still choose to integrate with big fiat payment processors, such as Stripe or Paypal, to handle transactions. As a matter of fact, only 15,174 businesses worldwide accept bitcoin³, which is a tiny fraction in relation to the total number of businesses that exist. Bitcoin also suffers from poor scalability issues which makes it impractical for everyday transactions.⁴ On the other hand, Ethereum has not been able to spearhead much of anything on the normal internet. The most attention it has garnered thus far involves speculative opportunities to exchange NFTs or metaverse land parcels. It also relies extensively on centralized nodes such as Amazon Web Services,⁵ especially to handle the bulkier user metadata, which raises concerns of how decentralized the platform really is. It’s fair to say that thus far, crypto has not garnered enough momentum outside its own microcosm to have a significant impact on the greater internet economy. Next time: We explore the project that actually is changing the rules: Qortal.

The normal internet relies on centralized platforms for access and profits, while Qortal opens the doors for everyone to own, build, and earn.

1. CoinMarketCap. (2025, March 29). Bitcoin (BTC) price, chart, and market cap. CoinMarketCap. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin

2. CoinMarketCap. (2025, March 29). Ethereum (ETH) price, chart, and market cap. CoinMarketCap. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/ethereum/

3. Edwards, S. (2023, November). Will retail ever truly embrace cryptocurrency payments? Sherwen Studios. https://www.sherwen.com/insights/retail/will-retail-ever-truly-embrace-cryptocurrency-payments

4. Trust Machines. (n.d.). Bitcoin scalability problem: Achieving scale. Trust Machines. https://trustmachines.co/learn/bitcoin-scalability/

5. Melinek, E. (2024, January 29). Ethereum’s decentralisation threatened by reliance on Amazon, experts warn. DL News. https://www.dlnews.com/articles/defi/ethereum-decentralisation-threatened-by-reliance-on-amazon/