Until I stepped into the world of Crypto, I had never realized or experienced the real cost of money movement. Until, you do small transactions in Crypto, is when the transaction fees hits you. You feel it.

But in the traditional world, especially with cash, the true cost of simple ₹100 cash transaction is quietly buried under the layers of infrastructure, operations and personal effort.

Let me break it down,Lets say I want to give ₹100 to a friend in cash.Sounds simple, right?

but this what happens behind the scenes.

1. Printing the ₹100 Note - ₹2
   The SPMCIL prints this note using specialized paper, ink, security threads.

2. Transporting the Note to an ATM - ₹0.40
   From SPMCIL facility to RBI Chest, then to ATM via armored vans and security escorts.

3. ATM Infra & Handling Costs - ₹1.00
   Banks spend on ATM installation, Rent, Security, Electricity, Internet etc - to keep it running for you

4. My Personal Cost to withdraw the ₹100 - ₹20.00
   This includes fuel to the ATM + minimum cost of a citizen's time time (lets say 20 minutes to do this)

If we add up the above 4, it comes to around ₹23.4, just to hand over the cash to a friend.

Sorry for making this dramatic, I know that printing is a onetime cost, once in circulation, the cost might come down with time. But this is just to come to realization the Cost of Transaction that is invisible to us. With UPI we can estimate this ₹2.00, significantly cheaper than a cash transaction, but still, there is a cost to it.

Coming to Crypto world. I have been experiencing recently that, if you are doing small amount of transactions, especially to obtain new tokens, there is a significant cost & effort to it. Until this cost of transaction is significant, it remains intimidating to an average user. A mom & pop grocery store in India doesn't prefer Credit Card transactions, because it dings 2% transaction fee.

I will admit to counter that there are alternative chains, in real world also we pay forex fees and so on. I am curious to know, what steps are taken in web3 to make sure that we make this cost of transactions invisible? make the transaction experience seamless?

The future of crypto won't be driven by decentralization alone,it will be driven by experience.