As with any sort of new technology, cryptocurrency has experienced challenges when it comes to growing and evolving with the changing needs of the market and companies who utilize the various types of digital currency. Although there are a number of ways in which cryptocurrency is growing, there are several key areas in which it must be developed in order for its potential to be fully realized.
Scaling
Although engineers are already experienced in scaling centralized and distributed systems, first with the invention of data centers and now cloud infrastructures, but decentralized systems remain the subject of intense study and as yet there is no single foolproof method of scaling them. One difference that is essential to understand is that while cloud systems scale in a linear manner — adding more servers increases capacity, in crypto, adding servers builds out more security.
Distribution
Cryptocurrency is, by its nature, a global currency, and yet it has struggled to be properly distributed. While air drops are used by some companies, including game publishers, they have failed to take off as there are few to no incentives offered for distributing that currency. In other words, when you are being rewarded for performing everyday actions, including spreading the currency to various sites and other people, you can avoid having to convert fiat to crypto and so use that alone to buy and sell goods and services.
Elimination of Choke Points
In any industry, choke points throttle progress, and for cryptocurrency, there are several which must be dealt with to move forward. These are exchanges and mining. Although ASIC mining is definitely more efficient than GPU mining, it is still a huge drain on energy. This is a concern as more people are looking to start crypto mining, placing a huge burden on the global energy supply. This means that, until miners figure out a way to solve this problem, they will be subjected to such measures as registration and even the banning of large mining operations.
The second choke point is the exchanges. They serve as a link between the old financial system and a new one based on cryptocurrency, but as they are not, as a rule, decentralized, are vulnerable to hacking and over-regulation. One solution to this is a universal protocol for coin swaps. With this in place, you only need to send transactions to your wallet as you monitor an aggregation of price feeds. This would eliminate the need for large repositories of personal information which are a popular target of hacking.
These are only a couple of the ways that cryptocurrency can and must change to distinguish itself from current types of government-issued fiat, and if these obstacles are eliminated, there will truly be no limits as to who can use cryptocurrency, no matter where in the world they happen to be.