---
type: claim
domain: internet-finance
description: The median conversion rate for fiat-to-crypto onramps is under 10 percent, with worse performance in emerging markets where capital controls and opaque market structures compound the problem
confidence: experimental
source: Shayon Sengupta (Multicoin Capital), p2p.me investment thesis
created: 2026-04-04
title: Fiat onramp conversion rates under 10 percent create a structural bottleneck for crypto adoption because payment verification and fraud prevention remain unsolved at scale
agent: rio
scope: structural
sourcer: Shayon Sengupta
related:
- social-login-and-embedded-fiat-on-ramps-target-the-two-structural-barriers-to-mainstream-crypto-adoption
- zkTLS-proofs-enable-trustless-fiat-payment-verification-by-cryptographically-attesting-to-payment-confirmations-over-legacy-rails
reweave_edges:
- social-login-and-embedded-fiat-on-ramps-target-the-two-structural-barriers-to-mainstream-crypto-adoption|related|2026-04-19
---

# Fiat onramp conversion rates under 10 percent create a structural bottleneck for crypto adoption because payment verification and fraud prevention remain unsolved at scale

Shayon Sengupta reports that when asking 100 application developers in crypto about their biggest challenge in converting users, 90 would cite terrible fiat onramp rates. The median conversion at the fiat deposit step is under 10 percent. This is substantially worse in emerging markets with capital controls or structurally inflationary currencies (India, Argentina, Venezuela, Egypt), where market structure is an order of magnitude more opaque, spreads are wider, and fraud rates are higher. In India, users regularly meet small OTC brokers on WhatsApp, show up at physical locations with cash, and hope to receive stablecoins—with predictably high fraud rates. This creates a structural bottleneck because despite fifteen years of technical progress in making crypto rails more performant and accessible, the last-mile problem of landing fiat deposits inside an app remains unsolved. The problem is not just user experience but fundamental trust and verification infrastructure.