The Custody Problem Hiding Inside Crypto Payments

This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/the-custody-problem-hiding-inside-crypto-payments. Crypto promised peer-to-peer payments, but exchanges and gateways turned many transactions into hosted balances and internal ledgers. Check more stories related to web3 at: https://hackernoon.com/c/web3. You can also check exclusive content about #crypto-payments, #peer-to-peer-payments, #custodial-wallets, #non-custodial-payments, #on-chain-settlement, #cross-chain-swaps, #wallet-infrastructure, #stablecoin-payments, and more. This story was written by: @ethancarter_a8fi3psg. Learn more about this writer by checking @ethancarter_a8fi3psg's about page, and for more stories, please visit hackernoon.com. Drawing on experience inside major crypto exchanges, the author argues that much of the industry has drifted away from Bitcoin's original peer-to-peer vision. While centralized exchanges and payment gateways solved real problems around speed, compliance, and usability, they also recreated many of the trusted intermediaries crypto was designed to remove. The article explores how direct settlement, self-custody, swap protocols, and non-custodial payment architectures can bring crypto payments closer to their original purpose.