Transaction times have improved a lot, there are networks designed for fast transaction times, and usually the payment can complete in seconds.

Hrm, well, if that is true, then that is a considerable improvement.

The volatility problem is solved by stable coins, which have their values fixed relative a currency. (Of course stable coins can, and have failed in the past. But that only concerns you if you keep your money as stable coin. For one-off payments this shouldn't matter).

But it absolutely does matter if you are a retailer that builds or uses a payment processor system around a 'stable' coin that suddenly flatlines one day.

There goes your ability to sell things!

Or, even worse, if the retailer does hold a standing balance in the 'stable' balance, or pays the sellers directly in a crypto... welp, theres, what, half of a months operating revenue, poof, gone, all the sellers? Now totally broke, unless they're also active crypto traders at the same time as being people who make things to sell.

Crypto markets have pretty good liquidity nowadays, it's not hard to get rid of the coins immediately after you get them (well to be fair if you are getting Valve volumes it could be a problem, should be fine for smaller stores).

I mean, you kind of showed a major flaw right there.

Yep, volume is much better.

But... not sufficient for actual large scale retail, or many, many small to mid size retailers.

Also, to the best of my knowledge... no 'stable' coin has anywhere near the volume of say BTC or ETH.

Crypto is a fast evolving field, so problems are being solved by the day.

No, hard disagree.

Most coins haven't even figured out how to actually be significantly, meaningfully untraceable, other than XMR.

Even a tornado blender thing can be unwound... or it can just steal some of your money.

What else has crypto figured out in almost 20 years now?

Well, aside from being an optimal vector for scamming people...

A new verification paradigm that still leaves it orders of magnitude more energy intensive than traditional payment processors?

NFTs? Who cares, its the least efficient FTP protocol ever devised, quite easy to poison or social hack.

I guess if payment processing speeds are now comparable to existing payment processors... wow, crypto is slightly less useless than what proceeded it?

I've beem following this shit since before Mt Gox opened the first online trading market.

Crypto has managed to become the most speculative, fundamental-less investment 'asset class' of all known human history.

It still isn't really private, and you still can't generally buy things with it, barring a few niche exceptions.

...

You can send a check, a digital eCheck, as payment for many, many things, thats been around longer than crypto.

If you are running an adult video game store, just accept that, can paypal.

Might be slow, but its very, very simple, and cheap for a store to implement.