You cherrypicked examples where there's a physical element to the transaction.

What exactly does WhatsApp assemble? Or where do I get customer service in person for WhatsApp?

If WhatsApp disappeared today, over a billion people would lose their main communication channel with friends and families, and millions of businesses in emerging markets would lose a primary sales channel.

If crypto disappeared today, what would be the real-world effect? How many people would be inconvenienced in some other sense than "bummer, I hoped this would make me rich"? How many actual businesses would be impacted?

Well actually, you would throw a major wrench in the works of most ransomware operations.

So there’s that.

I've seen some concern voiced over counterparty risk in private credit contagion into public markets. Counterparty relationships are not uniformly visible across the financial landscape, so it is conceivable someone accepts a counterparty position on an instrument where crypto is pledged as an asset. This instrument is presented as a different asset obscuring the crypto, a tower of downstream instruments are constructed on top of that original instrument, and tranches leak out into a bunch of other more tradfi instruments.

I've yet to see evidence that this is widespread in practice. Though admittedly there is a lot that can go on in private credit that is out of reach from public analytics.

Even if there was contagion risk however, I don't expect extinction level financial system damage. Total global crypto valuation at peak was around $1T USD depending upon who you ask. Global software industry alone is around $10T USD. If crypto goes to zero tomorrow, it would be life-alterting to many people, but most of the world would go on about their lives.

More value has been erased from global equity markets this year than any hypothetical crypto-to-zero scenario, and while the consequences won't be pleasant, in the developed world if you have saved up 1-7 years of living expenses you will barely notice the recession currently inbound.

WhatsApp charges businesses for access to its API, and also has a payments platform in emerging markets. It assembles and sells software products.

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