If you don’t keep up with crypto, you might picture it as just price charts and people trading for profit. That’s partly true, but there’s more to it. In some places, crypto and stablecoins are already used for everyday payments, similar to cards or bank transfers. In others, adoption is still growing as new companies and countries update their rules.

We chose five common areas where people think crypto is used to see how much we really know and how far decentralized payments have come in each one.

Assumption 1: It's Still Just for Trading, Investing, and Holding

Reality: This part of the picture is still mostly accurate.

Let’s start with trading. In 2025, crypto derivatives markets handled $85.7 trillion, according to CoinGlass. That’s far more than what’s spent in the real world. Stablecoins show a similar trend. They moved $46 trillion on-chain last year, based on a16z’s State of Crypto 2025 report, but most of that was trading and bot activity, not people buying things. After removing those, only about $9 trillion reflects real-world use. Ownership is similar: around 716 million people hold crypto worldwide, but only 40 to 70 million actually use it. Most just hold onto it.

So, the old belief is partly true. For most people, trading and holding are still the main ways they use crypto. But there’s more happening now, and we’ll look at that next.

Assumption 2: Shopping, Travel, and Donations Are Still a Novelty

Reality: Crypto is already being used in these areas. There are real examples, from big retailers to airlines.

We’ve already talked about these three areas in detail, so we won’t repeat everything here. Shopping is the biggest category, from PayPal’s Pay with Crypto to stores like Newegg and Gucci. You can see the full list for more examples.

Travel and donations are similar: there are a few direct examples and many more that use payment processors. For a full breakdown, see our post, “What You Can Actually Buy With Crypto.”

Assumption 3: Getting Paid for Work in Crypto Is a Legal Gray Area

Reality: It depends on where you live, and a few countries have clear rules for this.

A freelancer or remote employee paid in stablecoins faces a different question than a shopper. It’s not just about spending, but whether you can legally receive it and what happens at tax time. Georgia, Hungary, and the UAE have the clearest rules.

Georgia doesn’t tax foreign-sourced income at all, crypto or otherwise, since the government doesn’t count it as “Georgian-sourced.” Tbilisi has become a major remote-work hub, helped by 365 days of visa-free entry for most nationalities. Hungary taxes everything, including crypto gains, at a flat 15% rate, with no extra schedules to figure out. The White Card residence permit is made for freelancers and remote employees paid from abroad. The UAE has no personal income tax, and a 2026 federal decree put all crypto oversight under one regulator, replacing the old fragmented system.

Other countries are still catching up. The Philippines is working on a digital nomad visa that would exempt some remote workers from local income tax, but it’s not final yet. Singapore’s Monetary Authority introduced a broader licensing framework for digital asset services in 2026, building on its earlier stablecoin guidelines. This shows the rules are still being developed.

On the company side, the infrastructure is still growing. We covered this in detail in our article about living entirely on crypto. Platforms like Deel and Bitwage now handle stablecoin payroll directly, and B2B services like Rain let you spend those stablecoins as soon as they arrive, without needing to cash out first.

Assumption 4: Subscriptions Just Work Like Everything Else

Reality: Subscriptions work with crypto in only a few places. Almost everywhere else, you need a workaround.

VPN services are the best example of subscriptions that already work with crypto. NordVPN, Mullvad, and ProtonVPN all accept crypto directly, with no need for a workaround. Most other subscriptions aren’t there yet, so people use other methods. Patreon doesn’t accept crypto, but a service called Moon lets you buy a Visa card with crypto and then use that card to pay Patreon. Adobe doesn’t accept crypto either, according to its support team. Substack partnered with the Bitcoin payment processor OpenNode in 2021, but only for “a select group of crypto-focused publications,” and that group hasn’t grown.

The main reason is a technical gap. Credit cards have built-in systems for automatic recurring payments, but Bitcoin and Ethereum do not. Some companies, like Halliday, Sphere, and Stripe’s Bridge, spent 2026 building this missing feature using smart-account permissions instead of card networks. It’s still early days. Subscriptions are one of the newest crypto payment categories, not one of the most established.

Assumption 5: Gift Cards Are Just a Crypto Gimmick

Reality: This is the strongest and most developed use case in this article.

Gift cards work today, at real scale, for almost anything you might want to buy. Bitrefill, based in Stockholm since 2014, turns crypto into gift cards for over 5,000 brands in 170 countries, using the Lightning Network to keep things fast and fees low. Across the industry, crypto-to-gift card transactions add up to more than $2 billion a year, covering retail, travel, entertainment, and telecom. The process is simple: you use crypto to buy a card, then use the card to make your purchase. For the buyer, crypto reliably becomes a real purchase at a scale none of the other categories here have reached.

Wrap-Up

Some of these categories are already established, while others are still being developed, one company at a time. Want to know what you can already buy with crypto? Check out our full guide: What You Can Actually Buy With Crypto: A Global Overview of Where It Works.

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