> Unless there are other demonstrated needs that blockchain solves there aren’t going to be more apps, or more anything. I hear this line often. As an aside, I

> Unless there are other demonstrated needs that blockchain solves there aren’t going to be more apps, or more anything. I hear this line often. As an aside, I'll just share some of the things I've seen so far. 1) International payments. There are countries where the domestic market isn't big enough, so once they expand, they quickly end up doing business with foreign companies, or hire people in foreign countries. Banks in different countries are unlikely to have a direct connection to each other. So they have to route through ones they do have a relationship--typically bigger banks. This process can take weeks, and can throw off the cadence of your people getting paid. Cryptocurrencies reduces international payments down from weeks to a couple minutes/hours. 2) Store of value in a country with runaway inflation. Venezuela has been the poster-child for this need, as its fiat has been inflating to the point where it's nearly worthless. The country doesn't allow people to leave, and makes it difficult to trade for other currencies. Hence, people there are using Bitcoin to store the value they have left. 3) Ownable and composable collectible card game assets. Cryptokitty is the poster child, but also check out Gods Unchained and Zombie Battleground. These are CCGs where the game makers can't nerf the cards you own. Not sure how they'd rebalance the game, but actually owning your digital stuff has emotional appeal to players. The other interesting thing here is that any game can build on top of these assets to make other games. That means you can move your digital stuff from game to game. Just like the early internet, most of the early applications are for the ecosystem itself. Stablecoins, decentralized exchanges, different wallets, custodial solutions, token trackers, etc. These are unlikely to be useful to you unless you already believe cryptocurrencies have value. So that means the number of things you believe are useful built on top of it is small, and most early applications are hidden from you. >The article implies that the infrastructure is like sitting there waiting for apps. As for what the article implies, I didn't get that read. When I build apps, I also have needs that arise that I wish someone else built the infrastructure for. The common thing I run up against is that I wish I had a easy-to-setup data pipeline with resilience, reproducibility, and observeability. Apps inspire need for infrastructure, just as infrastructure inspires apps. In an infrastructure sense, I view cryptocurrencies as a settlement network of transferable value.