Crypto made my web app possible - a real use case for crypto

For a lot of people, crypto is still mostly speculation and scams. For me, it has solved a core business problem.

openrender.app exists because crypto made it possible to build a platform that can accept payments without a long onboarding process, meeting Visa and Mastercards arbitrary naughty list, and settle funds for expensive compute instantly.

Traditional payment processors basically refused onboarding for uncensored NSFW image and video generation. When a platform touches that kind of content, a lot of normal payment rails just won’t support it, which makes it tough to build anything sustainable.

What crypto gave me:

• A way to serve users globally.
• Instant settlement for compute-heavy service costs.
• A low fee path for small-value transactions and top-ups.
• No strict payment processor requirements.

OpenRender is still a work in progress, but crypto was one of the reasons it could get off the ground at all. Without it I would not have been able to take any payments, and would be stuck wrestling with "high risk" merchant accounts.

Curious how other founders here are using crypto for actual product infrastructure instead of just fundraising/speculation. Honestly, OpenRender probably wouldn’t exist in its current form without crypto.

One major drawback: a lot of people simply have a habit of using cards, and are scared to touch crypto. For those users, I serve them via Thirdweb which does FIAT to crypto on ramping automatically - the issue is it's clunky and not particularly smooth. Does anyone know of a similar product to Thirdweb, where the customer pays by card and I get crypto?