Back in 2017 when I got into crypto, and man how fast time flies, crypto was literally nothing more than speculative internet money. Well, it wasn't even that, cryptocurrencies back then were something like gaming points that we would speculate on.
Other than Ethereum there wasn't much use case for any of the projects listed on exchanges. Not even Bitcoin, which was supposed to be a new form of electronic cash that needs no third party to function was that used for its core purposes. Aside from some dealers who accepted BTC for Lambos, and similar products, you couldn't pay for much with Bitcoin.
Hence it was itself a pure speculative digital coin as well. Five years later and we have a country that adopted it as legal tender, we have a chain of supermarkets in South Africa, Pick n Pay where you can pay with Bitcoin using the lightning network, and if I remember correctly 
Interoperability between blockchains was also probably just on some vision boards in some underground offices and nothing more at that time. Now, CUB is showing us that such interoperability is so easy to use and also so profitable in some cases. Remember sending USDT or any other Ethereum-built token from one address to another just a few years ago? It was a nightmare when it came to the fees. Now you can send USDT and whatever using Polygon's blockchain or Solana's instead of Ethereum and it's cheaper...
As a matter of fact...
The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) decentralized finance pilot program just executed “the first real-world use case for institutional-grade DeFi protocols,” Aave founder Stani Kulechov told Decrypt.
J.P. Morgan, DBS Bank and SBI Digital Asset Holdings yesterday used the Aave protocol on Polygon—a layer-2 scaling solution—to complete foreign exchange and government bond transactions on the Ethereum network. The banks exchanged tokenized versions of Singapore government securities bonds for Japanese government bonds, and Japanese Yen for Singapore Dollars as a test.
source
These guys(institutional players) coming from the traditional banking sector were the ones who were calling Bitcoin dead, not having a real use case or rat poison, a few years ago. I bet they were referring to the whole industry when making such assessments and look at them now...
The Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS), J.P. Morgan, DBS Bank, and SBI Digital Asset Holdings are using some of the above-mentioned protocols in testing how these would serve their businesses. Do you know what this situation makes me think of? These fuckers are doing more than we do to "mass adopt" blockchain technology.
How many bars, shops, marketing companies, escorts, or even drug dealers do you know that accept crypto instead of cash for their services/products? I personally know none who accepts crypto instead of cash for anything around here. There were some SH car ads, a year ago, that I found, where crypto was accepted, as well as cash, but other than that... Nothing, nada.
Isn't mass adoption supposed to come from the masses, though? In my humble opinion, it should happen that way, but we're lazy, we lack confidence and vision and we are still too tied to the system to even think of breaking the chains to it. I pay with crypto at any store accepting VISA cards, but that's not what I'm pointing at.
Such payments still go through some centralized systems, which sucks. The point was to decentralize, not to offer "our technology" to centralized entities so they can make the products, and oftentimes brand them as their own, that we are going to use. I wish we had a Pick n Pay shop in here... or a granny taking sats for eggs at the market... or...
Anyway, time to go out and enjoy the sun now. I wish you all a great Saturday and see you next time.
Thanks for your attention,
Adrian