I must first apologize for the late response to my previous article. Life has its way of taking you on it's course. Regardless, let's get back to the mass adoption conversation.
This past week I had to chance to do a lot of talking to non-crypto users at Denver Startup Week, and it really solidified what I've been trying to make a point of. That point being that the average consumer (in the United States) has not reached a motivation-to-barrier factor that moves them to enter the ecosystem. The motivation was high when crypto was booming last year and early this year, but that motivation has fallen and we've not done a good job, as an industry, at presenting other motivating factors beyond the price and the buzz in the media. Barriers to entry have simultaneously been reduced and increased, meaning that things like wallets and applications are easier to use, but with extensive KYC (Know Your Customer)/AML(Anti money Laundering) requirements and FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) being proliferated by certain institutions and media, the psychological barriers have increased.
What this industry needs right now, and for the future, is a means of allowing users to experience cryptocurrency in a risk-free, non-serious context. The blockchain platforms that will change the financial workings of the world or revolutionize our healthcare, logistics, and commerce sectors are in the works and they will do wonderful things for industries, business and consumers alike, but these are not the platforms that will truly unlock the power of blockchain and crypto for the masses.
In modern society, our currencies tend to be defined for us, then thrust upon us to use. Now, for the first time ever, we have the opportunity to define our currencies in whatever way we like. We now have the technology to create our own vehicles of value and create actual value around them with the economies that we create for them. The ICO boom was a beautiful (and slightly tragic) exploration of how an idea can be tokenized and what the market value of that idea could be, but there was a lot to be desired of that boom.
What I've seen as the two biggest barriers to consumer mass adoption, besides scalability, are education and trust. Education about what exactly they need to do to safely engage with the crypto ecosystem, and the trust that the platforms and service providers are working in the consumers best interest. And these two can be solved together by taking a "give first" approach. The ability to create opportunities for users to earn via microtasks is one of the incredibly powerful features of crypto, and if we are going to incentivize an action why not incentivize the learning of skills and knowledge that allow people to take advantage of the benefits of blockchain and crypto. There's actually an incredible amount of wealth that can be generated when you focus on empowering users first, as opposed to finding ways to extract value from users immediately.
Companies like Niffler and Jalapeno Inventive, which I am CEO and co-founder of, also talk about the importance of education to mass adoption, and not just knowledge but the availability of tools and the skills to use them.
Thought leaders in the space are constantly talking about education being important to adoption, but the industry has not taken the steps to address this gap. My opinion is that effective skills-based education is one of the biggest opportunities in the current crypto landscape.
At the individual level, crypto enthusiasts continue to download wallets for their friends and family and put crypto directly into those users hands, and this works great to get users to start, but there tends to be a drop off in engagement after the initial dopamine hit. Market downturns also turn these new users off if they are not given trusted sources to continue learning about crypto beyond the price. We can do this with platforms based on education and entertainment, like the ones mentioned earlier.
Let's continue to think about this approach and I hope to see more projects focused on education and removing ALL barriers to entry for the average consumer.
