Today I bought a plane ticket directly with USDT on Ctrip's overseas platform for the first time:

The payment interface automatically pops up with the Stablecoin option → generates a payment address → withdraw USDT / USDC from the exchange or pay on-chain → confirmation in about 1 second, or you can scan the QR code to pay directly. The experience is almost indistinguishable from using a credit card, but the settlement happens on the chain.

I feel very happy! After shouting about the “future of payments” for so many years, this is not just an experimental scenario but a real-world use case like buying a plane ticket or booking a hotel. It’s a tangible combination of “stablecoins + public chain settlement layer + compliant entry.”

So, I started thinking: if Ethereum\SOLANA represent the future trend of on-chain payments, then is their ceiling roughly comparable to Visa / Mastercard?

Roughly comparing to Visa’s market cap, the corresponding $ETH price is about $9,500.
But the problem is: the value captured by on-chain payments does not equal the value the chain itself can capture.

In stablecoin payments, the public chain often only earns “settlement fees.”
And as Ethereum, L2, and other high-performance chains push settlement costs lower and lower, a real issue arises:
If the chain’s product goal is to make settlement as cheap as possible, what ultimately allows it to capture value?

Relying solely on fees may not be enough.
Especially when settlement costs become negligible, the path to “getting rich from transit fees” will become increasingly thin.

What truly differentiates chains from each other may ultimately come down to the most fundamental question:
Who do you trust? Where will you place your largest funds, longest contracts, and heaviest assets?

Therefore, I believe the real question is not “Can ETH, SOL be compared to Visa,” but rather, in the next ten years, how much value globally will be willing to settle and deposit assets on-chain?

Today, with the simple act of using U to buy a plane ticket, I am even more convinced that the turning point for crypto payments may not be some grand narrative, but the moment when you unconsciously start “living with it.”

PAY truly is the way for blockchain to go mainstream.