Researcher
I agree with @cdixon that crypto today is laying its foundation through financial use cases.
I also agree with @hosseeb that the real problem for non financial crypto use cases right now is low demand, not regulation.
Adding my own takes:
Crypto has already proven itself in finance through stablecoins and tokenization. This market will keep growing steadily, but it has clearly moved into an adoption phase, which means the era of purely speculative upside here is mostly behind us.
I think non-financial crypto use cases like social and media will be hard to adopt unless public perception fundamentally shifts, given the damage people have already experienced from extreme centralization.
Gaming is even harder. Game development by nature benefits from centralized control, and because of that, crypto based architectures feel like a poor fit. Widespread adoption there seems close to impossible.
Still, crypto will not end with financial use cases alone.
At its core, crypto is an "incentive system". After finance, the most promising non financial adoption will come from areas where incentive systems are naturally required.
From that perspective, DePIN feels inevitable. As AI continues to advance, demand for computing and energy will only accelerate. In the long run, decentralized computing or decentralized energy systems are exactly where crypto can become essential. Adoption may be slow today, but as these industries mature, growth will follow naturally.
People living in the early web era, sending emails and browsing encyclopedias, could not imagine today’s internet.
Crypto is now laying the financial bedrock of the internet. Predicting which non financial use cases will emerge on top of that foundation is nearly impossible, but one thing feels clear. It won’t end with finance alone.
