Breaking Barriers to Crypto Adoption

It’s hard enough for people to adopt a new application, or even navigate on their phone to the banking app to pay off their credit card… sidenote: how have so many people not realized how bad credit card debt is to have? failed adoption or misleading adoption? Let me know in a reply.

The obstacles

Pulling aside from traditional banking however there remains one critical point of stress for any new & innovative system. Getting users to actually use it, & notice the benefits.Most people do NOT want to change, so when you push cryptocurrencies in front of the average Joe you arent only battling with preconceived notions like: “crypto is a scam”, “my friend lost all his money in crypto”, “the government said crypto is bad”… you’re also dealing with the fact that most people wouldn’t be prompted to dive into the tools currently available even if there were only good things to be said. Why? Because crypto at the moment is not effortless. There are very few apps and websites that utilize the benefits of cryptocurrencies & blockchains without having the user trek through a 13-step system and 3000-word articles on getting started.The adoption of users comes not only from perceived benefits but from people experiencing those benefits firsthand. It is pretty hard at the moment for users to get there without a large amount of effort.This holds true not only for crypto but for the simplest of things that are actually useful pieces of technology or updated applications. People get stuck on the new processes or information thrown at them and will often reject it.Now… it’s not all bad, crypto has a chance here & now that you’re aware of this obstacle I want to go over some examples and initiatives to showcase specific benefits crypto offers.

Overcoming the obstacles

Crypto has been around for over a decade now, with the inception of Bitcoin in 2009 we’ve made a lot of headway to have nearly half a reported BILLION crypto users (people who’ve used crypto) across the globe1

What started as the most complex thing to get into is now many times easier to be exposed to. Adoption is coming, but it can be a lot better following some of the ways we’ve seen some large success in the past years & repeating them across different blockchains & apps. Below are some successful examples & principles towards a more adopted technology stack that can help people see & feel the perceived value of crypto.

Reddit has minted over 10,000,000 NFTs for users of their platform to showcase their personal flare as a “digital collectible”, how did they get so many non-crypto people to mint these NFTs?They didn’t call them NFTs at all, they just provided a system that used NFTs and made the experience smooth and simple similar to a non-crypto experience they are familiar with, this time around though the users have full control to own their avatar if they wanted to. No one was forced to learn about NFTs, people got a good experience and realized the benefits by themselves.Another important note is the use of crypto Layer 2s here, Reddit used Polygon, an Ethereum layer to maximize the user experience while still adding in native crypto benefits. I suspect that Layer 2s will play a major role in overall adoption as we push forward to helping people feel the value crypto has to offer.

Reddit isn’t the only thing in the world implementing crypto to a place where users can see & feel the benefits. Even though up until recently most of the half a billion users of crypto have been speculators, people are waking up to real-world problems as events unfold that put people's finances at risk & are now looking to crypto as a safe haven to have true control over their money.A banking crisis that unraveled a show of many insolvent banks has made people start thinking twice about where they store their money, not only is crypto one of the first places people look to when finding an alternative to traditional finance, it’s the place where people are already proactively storing a large part of their wealth.Now, stacking more user-friendly systems to onboard people that want full control of their own money is the end goal here to me that overcomes more and more obstacles stopping people from benefiting from crypto.At the same time, I think the majority of people will need to experience something more intense to see the perceived value of crypto so until then the best path forward to me is to 1) Educate the people who want to learn 2) Support the use & development in applications that make crypto benefits an easy process for the end user (Layer 2s are a big part of this), and finally 3) Continue exploring our interests and remaining interested in the things we think can truly have a positive impact on the world.