The cryptocurrency payments are on the verge of disrupting the global financial systems. 

Such a compelling thesis has been presented by Ripple executive Reece Merrick in his recent post on the X social media. 

In 2000, the dot-com bubble was bursting and buying things online was globally negligible, estimated at roughly 0.2% of all retail sales. People simply didn't trust the web with their money yet.

Just as global e-commerce spent its first decade being dismissed as overhyped, it… pic.twitter.com/TfEetYuL83

According to Merrick, the burgeoning cryptocurrency sector is mirroring the growth trajectory of e-commerce, which was also dismissed as a bizarre novelty in the early 2000s before turning into the ubiquitous juggernaut that it is today. 

Future hyper-growth

One must look back at the origins of online retail to realize where cryptocurrency payments could be potentially heading next (despite their failure to gain mainstream adoption). 

In the year 2000, few people actually wanted to type their credit card number into a web browser. This was considered to be too novel and too reckless, and online shopping was globally negligible. Back then, it accounted for only an infinitesimal 0.2% of all retail sales. 

However, this dramatically changed with the advent of secure payment gateways and broadband internet. Eventually, the smartphone made e-commerce even more seamless.

Online shopping skyrocketed from its near-zero to 20% of total retail sales by 2026. "Today, globally, more than $1 out of every $5 spent on retail happens online," Merrick noted. 

According to the Ripple exec, crypto payments could see the same explosion as e-commerce. The crypto industry is currently in the middle of building the robust infrastructure that would be necessary for turning this into reality. 

We are currently witnessing the deployment of the "broadband" and "smartphones" of the crypto era: highly scalable Layer-1 blockchains, liquid stablecoins, regulated fiat on-ramps, and so on. 

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