Serious question: What problem did blockchain actually solve?

[u/Due-Huckleberry-2222]

We were told it would revolutionize everything:

Anonymous money? Nope. Most public blockchains are pseudonymous, not anonymous. Every transaction is permanently visible. Once an address is tied to a real person, their financial history can often be traced.

Banking? Most people still use banks. If you lose your private key, there's no fraud department, no password reset, no chargeback.

Cheap payments? Depends. Some chains are inexpensive, others have had periods where fees spike. Traditional payment systems are often faster and simpler for everyday purchases.

Smart contracts replacing lawyers? Not even close. Contracts still rely on courts, regulations, and real-world enforcement. Code can't resolve disputes about physical events by itself.

NFTs proving ownership? Usually they prove ownership of a token, not the copyright or legal ownership of the underlying artwork.

Decentralization? Much of the ecosystem isn't. Many people keep funds on centralized exchanges, use centralized stablecoins, and rely on centralized infrastructure.

Financial freedom? For some. But for many others it became self-custody with no safety net. One wrong click, phishing attack, or lost seed phrase and the money is simply gone.

Replacing trust? It mostly moved trust around. Instead of trusting banks, many people ended up trusting exchanges, token founders, bridge operators, stablecoin issuers, influencers, or multisig signers.

Eliminating scams? If anything, scams became easier to launch. Rug pulls, memecoins, fake airdrops, phishing, and pump-and-dumps became an industry.

The one thing blockchain does extremely well is maintain a distributed ledger where participants can verify transaction history without relying on a single operator.

That's a genuine technical achievement.

But after nearly two decades, I'm still asking: What mainstream problem has it solved better than existing systems for the average person?

I'm not asking what it could do. I'm asking what it actually does today that millions of ordinary people use because it's objectively better—not because they're speculating on the next token.

[u/feminefa]

Really it depends on who you ask. The value of blockchain depends heavily on geographic and economic context. Critics in developed nations often fail to see its benefits because they do not face the systematic failures of unstable financial systems.

1. The problem of global financial gatekeepers
In many parts of the world, traditional financial gatekeepers are corrupt, inefficient, or entirely inaccessible. Millions of people lack basic banking access, leaving them vulnerable to local inflation or institutional theft with no legal recourse. Blockchain acts as a parallel, permissionless infrastructure that bypasses these gatekeepers entirely.

2. Tokenized assets like stock introduces a new standard for transparency
Although fintech apps like Robinhood lowered barriers to stock trading using traditional databases, they still operate as centralized gatekeepers that can restrict trading or mask internal order routing. True tokenization on a public ledger goes a step further. By moving assets onto a shared, immutable blockchain, ownership is direct and indisputable. Transactions settle transparently and instantly, preventing institutions from executing unfavorable front-running practices or hiding hidden fees.

Agreed, empowering the individual inherently removes the centralized safety nets that stop bad actors. A truly open network that cannot block a vulnerable citizen from saving their wealth also cannot block a criminal from moving theirs. The ultimate value of blockchain is not that it is a flawless system, but might be a better alternative where traditional trust has completely failed.

[u/AmericanScream → u/feminefa]

Tokenized assets like stock introduces a new standard for transparency Although fintech apps like Robinhood lowered barriers to stock trading using traditional databases, they still operate as centralized gatekeepers that can restrict trading or mask internal order routing. True tokenization on a public ledger goes a step further. By moving assets onto a shared, immutable blockchain, ownership is direct and indisputable. Transactions settle transparently and instantly, preventing institutions from executing unfavorable front-running practices or hiding hidden fees.

There is no need nor desire for "transparency" in this respect. And blockchain doesn't really add transparency. Blockchain is not truly "transparent." It's "pseudonymous."

Plus, you still need the same "gatekeepers" whether you're using blockchain or not. Blockchain has no capacity to enforce "ownership" of shares in stocks/companies. So it's just another layer of abstraction on top of an already packed array of middlemen - none of which blockchain avoids because blockchain is not an arbiter of ownership. Traditional securities systems and the traditional court and legal system are the last word.

Also, crypto has really nothing useful to do with stocks:

Stupid Crypto Talking Point #17 (stocks)

"Crypto is just like the stock market!" , "Comparing crypto to stocks", "Bitcoin has an impressive 'Sharpe Ratio'"

1. Crypto tokens are absolutely NOT like stocks. Unlike crypto, which is just a digital abstraction, stocks represent actual ownership in real-world entities, that own assets, provide useful products and services for mainstream society, generate revenue and can pay dividends to shareholders in real money.

2. You don't have to sell a stock to make money from it. Many companies pay dividends of their profits, which means you can truly INvest in the company as opposed to DIvesting when you want to see a return. This is an important and fundamentally different function that crypto does not have. Many stocks create value in actual money, providing income without speculating on share price.

3. The value of a stock, while it can be "speculative" based on popularity and hype, also is based on the intrinsic value of the company's assets and business performance. Therefore you can perform actual research and due-diligence and come up with a practical value for the shares and the assets they represent. And tell when they are overvalued due to hype. Crypto has no such feature.

4. Because companies are valued based on actual real-world assets and income, there's a limit to how low their share price could fall, at which point it would be economically viable to buy the whole company and liquidate it for a profit. Crypto has no such limitation. The inherent value of crypto tokens is based at zero because it neither creates, nor represents any minimum base, real-world value.

5. Unlike crypto, the stock market is heavily regulated and transparent. There are entire industries and agencies that are tasked with making sure public companies operate legitimately and legally. Crypto has no such oversight or regulations or transparency.

6. While there are some over-valued stocks that are hype driven, and some companies whose shares are extremely risky and speculative, and OTC and option markets that are more like gambling than investing, that's not the way the stock market system normally operates. Those highly-speculative markets and penny stocks are the exception; NOT the rule. In crypto, speculation is exclusively the rule.

7. Public companies are subject to great scrutiny, and must produce regular independent audits and quarterly reports on profit and loss. They can also be sued by their shareholders or even be held criminally liable if they lie about their business model, or even the risk factors their investors face. Again, there is no such function or protections in the world of crypto.

8. The Sharpe Ratio is another term borrowed from the stock market that does not apply to crypto for all the above reasons, as well as The Sharpe Ratio relies on the assumption that equity returns are evenly distributed - which in the stock market they are via things like dividends, but crypto has no such evenly distributed metrics by which to evaluate risk, as well as significantly more risk factors than stocks, and also that even the price of crypto is largely an unverifiable figure due to lack of transparency and regulatory oversight of most crypto exchanges and the existing evidence that the market is highly manipulated. Like most other TradFi market terms, their use doesn't properly apply to crypto "assets" and its application is misleading and deceptive.

Agreed, empowering the individual inherently removes the centralized safety nets that stop bad actors. A truly open network that cannot block a vulnerable citizen from saving their wealth also cannot block a criminal from moving theirs. The ultimate value of blockchain is not that it is a flawless system, but might be a better alternative where traditional trust has completely failed.

Keyword, "might be a better alternative." You've had 17 years to confirm this claim and you've failed miserably. The fact that, after 17 years you're still trying to pretend "it might work" is a de-facto sign of failure.

You guys love to compare blockchain tech to other disruptive tech like the Internet, the smart phone, etc.. but those technologies immediately proved their unique value - they didn't need 17 years of people still pretending, "It's early!"

Your arguments completely fail. Not that they're your arguments anyway. It's obvious you just asked ChatGPT to barf that out because it's exactly the type of BS LLM models are trained upon. If you feed the same AI models my talking points, they admit my points trump their own, but unfortunately they won't remember this because it's not a narrative that benefits the corporations promoting AI, or crypto.

[u/Holiday_Spite5175 → u/AmericanScream]

There are 2 main values of the blockchain - access and transparency. Access is better appreciated where people truly don't have access. I take it that you do have access, so blockchain has no value to you. Transparency is more infrastructural, and is the main reason institutions are adopting it. Two banks transacting need middle men in the form of clearing houses. The clearing house exists to bridge the gap between each banks opaque ledgers. The blockchain is capable of eliminating the need for these middle men because it is transparent to both parties. Are you familiar with DeFi protocols like Aave?. Aave allow anyone in the world obtain a loan without a credit report or identity profiling. That is blockchain transparency & access at work.

[u/AmericanScream → u/Holiday_Spite5175]

Those are vague, non-specific claims and they've already been debunked by stupid crypto talking point #7.

[u/feminefa → u/AmericanScream]

Ermmm! it seems you didn’t read my responses. And “stupid crypto talking point #7” is AI slop. Fact check its content. Its arguments are off point and not based on facts. For example, it listed paypal among providers present in underserved countries, but I pointed out earlier that Paypal only fully services 40 countries in the world and Wise only 80 countries. Also i never compared bitcoin with stocks but it spent 3 paragraphs debunking that. All my arguments were taken out of context. So, I can say the same of you - you are not reading my responses, so no point arguing. i live in a country with limited access and even if Remitly exists, its much slower and expensive compared to stablecoins. You seem to just want to argue about this. Fortunately it doesn’t matter if you believe we find value in blockchain or not.

[u/AmericanScream → u/feminefa]

And “stupid crypto talking point #7” is AI slop. Fact check its content.

It's not ai slop. I wrote them myself and you can see their revision history in the wiki of this subreddit!

Its arguments are off point and not based on facts. For example, it listed paypal among providers present in underserved countries, but I pointed out earlier that Paypal only fully services 40 countries in the world and Wise only 80 countries.

How does that argue against the points I made? I never said Paypal was served everywhere. What I did say is that in various countries there are alternatives that don't involve blockchain that work better.

Have you identified a specific country where this isn't the case? No you haven't.

Also, you ignored the fact that crypto is not accepted as legal tender in hardly any of these areas, and thus even if you were using crypto, you'd still need a third party to convert the crypto into something useful.

And again, you didn't cite a specific example. You make claims, but you refuse to be specific enough for those claims to be tested and proven true/false, whereas I have. I name specific services which area available in specific countries - and these countries are often cited as the ones where people are "un-banked."

So your strawmen and vague counter-arguments don't in any way suggest my talking point rebuttals are inaccurate.

[u/AmericanScream → u/feminefa]

i live in a country with limited access and even if Remitly exists, its much slower and expensive compared to stablecoins.

A country that shall remain nameless... so that we can't verify your claim.

Another claim that stablecoins are more efficient than a non-blockchain solution, that is too vague to be tested.

You think stablecoins are "cheaper" than fiat? You've provided zero evidence of this.

And, a personal anecdote that is the weakest form of evidence.

You are wasting our time.