The Adoption Impediment — Why Crypto Starts Slow

By: Rafi Glantz

I recently took a trip with my wife to Ireland to see Ed Sheeran and take a few days away from the hectic world of a pre-TGE protocol company. We rented a car and stayed mostly in small B&B’s, and when I went to pay for the first night’s stay outside the village of Kinsale, I jokingly asked the elderly proprietor if she accepted Bitcoin.

To my surprise, her face lit up and she said: “I’ve heard of it, but I don’t trust it, what is it?”

Fear

Let me repeat that. “I’ve heard of it, but I don’t trust it, what is it?” That right there is IMHO (in my humble opinion) the greatest obstacle to adoption of anything, let alone something as seemingly complex as cryptocurrency. People tend to fear and distrust what they don’t understand. It’s the quintessential reason we’re afraid of the dark!

A Repetitive Conversation

To my wife’s chagrin (APPARENTLY I talk about crypto a bit too often), we had an hour’s conversation (although to her I’m sure it felt longer) with the proprietor (let’s call her Mary) about cryptocurrency and blockchain, the potential applications and the current implementations. Our conversation followed a template that I have become all too familiar with while explaining crypto and blockchain to people of all sorts, so I’ll share some of the major points.

What’s Behind Bitcoin?

The first objection Mary had to cryptocurrency was that there was nothing behind it. She asked me: how many countries use it? Is it a big market? The answer is of course none of them and all of them, and yes it’s a big market. Countries themselves don’t necessarily participate in public blockchains or own cryptocurrencies, but there’s also nothing stopping them from doing so. Anyone in any country can participate in the economy. The market fluctuates a great deal due to liquidity and other issues, but it’s certainly a sizeable one regardless of those fluctuations.

Is It Real?

The next complaint was that it’s not physical money, and you never know where it really is. She understood quickly that crypto assets can be more reliable and real than the money in a bank account. She, like most, already knew that the numbers on the screen in someone’s bank account don’t necessarily reflect the amount of actual money in a vault. In fact, there’s nowhere near enough cash to represent all of the money that exists, so to a large degree, they really are just numbers on a screen. Once you’ve reached that realization, it’s easier to accept that a blockchain just organizes that data more securely and democratically.

Who’s In Charge?

Mary then wondered how she could recover her funds if something went wrong, who’s in charge? I explained that no one is in charge, one of the founding principles of blockchain is the absence of a trusted third party. For a small business owner like herself, that could reduce fees considerably and also grant her full control over her finances. That full control can be a double-edged sword though; if Mary were to lose her private keys or something of that nature, she would have no recourse. While banks charge fees, they also store private information and have customer support to make sure that people are not defrauded and can recover their funds in the event of an emergency.

Personal Responsibility

That responsibility is a fundamental shift in thinking, yet it is an essential one if we are to evolve beyond trusted third parties. Moving past the outdated banking system is a necessity for the advancement of financial technology and for global independence. People like Mary shouldn’t have to depend on banks for everything, that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing. The normalization of cryptocurrency may come with more personal responsibility, yes, but once you understand the ramifications of that, you’ll understand that the benefits are worth the extra work to stay safe. In an increasingly digital age where surveillance and control is ubiquitous, true independence and freedom is rare. That rarity confers value, which only goes up as governments look to control more aspects of our physical and digital lives.

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