Whether that is indeed "huge" ... is debatable at best ... Many companies have sprung up to offer fiat loans collateralized by crypto holdings.

These are absolutely TERRIBLE when the price of crypto plummets, as it has during most of 2018 - you get calls to post more collateral or else you simply lose your crypto and are still on the hook to repay the fiat loan.

For the merchants to accept crypto there should be legal clarity as to how they are supposed to enter debits and credits in crypto in their account books. And they need wholesalers to accept crypto or else they'll have to sell the crypto for fiat. And at that point the only cryptos that work are the stablecoins. And if the stablecoins themselves are fully collateralized with fiat (like Gemini dollar and, in theory, Tether) then it's all a zero-sum game.

Just to say that creating a crypto economy is a complicated thing. A fiat credit platform could be useful though, basically any economic activity helps the steem eco-system

Thanks for your thoughts