#稳定币市场 After reading this entrepreneurial self-narrative, the first thought that came to mind was: the payments industry has really deceived too many people.

It’s not that Web3 payments have no chance, but the structural problems exposed in this industry are far more brutal than most people imagine. I’ve seen too many scenarios like this—an apparently logical direction that simply doesn’t work in real business. This time is no different.

The author traveled through Yiwu, Shui Bei, and Putian, and found that the "bustling" scene in the report is completely different from the reality on the ground. This statement is particularly true. How many years have we discussed stablecoins replacing fiat for settlement in the crypto world? And what’s the actual penetration rate? Far from as high as imagined. More importantly, those paths that seem to "work" are fundamentally not earning through capability premiums, but through risk premiums— as long as nothing goes wrong, they all seem profitable. It’s like standing on a timed bomb counting money.

What truly moved me was the latter part of the discussion on the essence of payments. The metaphor "Payment is a water flow business" explains the entire industry’s logic thoroughly. How much water you can handle depends on how much risk you can bear; how long you can keep the water flowing depends on your tolerance under compliance, risk control, and regulation. This isn’t a product issue; it’s an infrastructure issue—requiring banking relationships, licensing structures, and long-term credit accumulation. How can a small team with an internet background possibly fill all these gaps in the short term?

Starting from Alipay’s third-party payment in 2014, how many times have we seen the same story— the front end looks glamorous, but the back end is full of pitfalls. Payments have always been a "slow business"; you can’t win just by sprinting and iterating.

The final shift is also quite interesting. The author didn’t leave the industry but instead moved from fighting over water routes to understanding the flow of water beside the water routes. Payments are just the entry point; the real value lies in how to manage these flowing funds. Looking back at the paths we’ve taken, it’s essentially a replay of the story after Alipay’s Yu’e Bao in 2008.

History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. Web3 payments today may really need to wait until enough capital has accumulated to see which opportunities are genuine. Until then, many projects that seem very bright are just temporarily unblocked— no one has yet turned off the tap.