The "specific examples" are so obvious that I presumed that any HNer could guess at least some of them, but I understand that not everyone has had the "aha!" moment with blockchains....
Here's an specific example, and certainly not the only one: I sell a digital good valued in $20k and I don't need to give paypal $580 (2.9% fee), it can be accomplished with $0 fees with the same level of trustworthiness. You just got rid of the middlemen...
Now multiply this sale for 100 articles my store sells daily and you'll begin to understand why this is so powerful.
$20,000 digital goods are so uncommon it might as well be a fantasy. Of course, it all adds up, and I will concede that you will save money on fees, but you can very easily end up paying a similar price for conversion surcharges and unpredictable daily price swings that can easily cost you more than 3% (though, there is the possibility that you might gain some money in the conversion, but that type of volatility has its own indirect costs in terms of business planning)
> $20,000 digital goods are so uncommon it might as well be a fantasy.
$20k subscriptions in finance (like a market data live feed) are not only common but even cheap. Now ask yourself why Wall Street is so much more hyped with blockchains than SV...
> You can very easily end up paying a similar price for conversion surcharges and unpredictable daily price swings
You don't have to pay with ETH, you could do things like peg your ERC20 token to the USD, 1 of your token = $1, the underlying asset (ETH) can do whatever it wants with the price, your tokens are decoupled from its value. The monetary policy is up to the party that issues the token... Remember: this is "programmable money".
> $20k subscriptions in finance (like a live market data feed) are not only common but even cheap
I'm not saying $20k digital goods are non-existent, I'm saying that they're an extreme niche that does not reflect practical reality for the vast majority of businesses.
> Now ask yourself why Wall Street is so much more hyped with blockchains than SV
Because SV is more often composed of individuals with a deep understanding of technical topics while finance is more often composed of people who are less knowledgable on these topics and more susceptible to buzzwords and hype (not that this doesn't exist in SV, but it is even worse in finance). This is evident by the fact that nearly nobody in finance is using blockchain tech outside of experimental research and buzzword bingo (unless you count crypto gamblers and traders).
> you could do things like peg your ERC20 token to the USD, 1 of your token = $1, the underlying asset (ETH) can do whatever it wants with the price
Except that this is even worse than Eth because arbitrary custom tokens are of questionable liquidity at best and impossible to liquidate at worst.
Here's an specific example, and certainly not the only one: I sell a digital good valued in $20k and I don't need to give paypal $580 (2.9% fee), it can be accomplished with $0 fees with the same level of trustworthiness. You just got rid of the middlemen...
Now multiply this sale for 100 articles my store sells daily and you'll begin to understand why this is so powerful.