How to fix the Terrible Crypto User Experience

A DIY guide

Maksim Hramadtsou

Published in

Good Crypto

5 min readNov 9, 2018

A preamble

We have embarked on our crypto journey a little over a year ago. As everyone, who have come into the space, we were equally fascinated by the technology and its promise and annoyed by the complex user experience across the whole eco-system.

The whole community seemed to understand that UI/UX issues were impeding the speed of crypto adoption and without fixing them it was impossible to move forward. Numerous articles were written and podcasts recorded.

— Ok, someone is going to fix this soon enough.

So we thought and, as most of the other teams in the space, started building cutting-edge tech for tomorrow.

A year passed.

One beautiful September morning I had just started my usual crypto routine. You know, the one where you check the prices on Coinmarketcap, then go to a couple of news sites to figure out what happened and why, then log in to one of the exchanges to sell one asset, then into the next to buy some more of another, then go to your portfolio tracking app (Excel in my case) to record the changes…

Oh, wait! That’s not true — I had realized that I had quit updating my portfolio spreadsheet a while ago. I had done it regularly for quite a while — you know, when everything had been going up, I had actually enjoyed doing it every day. But then things became not that fun anymore, plus I had become quite an active user — meaning multiple wallets and almost a dozen of exchange accounts — and it had simply started taking too long to keep track of things.

And then it struck me — no one had fixed it, it became only worse!

Everyone is so busy building new blockchains with zillions TPS and super-fast decentralized exchanges that we have completely forgotten that UI/UX issues are impeding the speed of crypto adoption and without fixing them it is impossible to move forward.

Expecto Patronum, anyone?

Then I sat back, closed my eyes and started dreaming: if I had a magic wand, what would I fix?

I want all crypto products I use to look and feel like Robinhood. Or Medium. Or an original iPhone, if you know what I mean. At the very least like Coinbase or Blockchain.com
I want to use the same crypto apps and have the same experience when I am at my desktop or on the couch with my smartphone
I want to know what is happening to my entire portfolio in real time without having to input every transaction manually
I want to be able to buy or sell any cryptocurrency from a single intuitive interface. I hate captchas: I hate crappy pictures, I hate storefronts, I hate bicycles, cars, and traffic lights. I hate putting pieces of the puzzle in place in 1.4s and beating 98% of the users. I hate creepy, google-translated interfaces. I hate keeping five exchange tabs open. I hate trading on mobile.
I want to have all the little features I need in one place. Market prices, news, alerts — you do not need a separate app for each of them. Less is more.
Finally, I want app developers to understand that I actually am human: when I check market prices and see a hundred-rows table with 12-digit numbers — my eyes hurt. And my head. I do appreciate that you are letting me know that the BTC market cap is exactly $111,150,991,147 and not $111,150,991,148. Or do I? No, in fact, I do not. I COULD NOT CARE LESS!!! Please, please, just make it $111.15B.

A to-do list

Unfortunately, I did not have my wand with me that day. That is why there were only two strategic choices left: to keep dreaming or DIY.

After a very short discussion with the team, the new Cryptto was born.

Cryptto will make all my wishes come true, and more!

CRYPTTO.TRADE

Single interface to send orders to any exchange you have an account on
No need to struggle with multiple logins and constantly open exchange tabs
Trade at your desk or on the go — seamless web and mobile experience
Trader protection — avoid costly fat-finger mistakes
Unified order types: from basic to the most complex. Learn once and use them on any exchange