I received a call from a friend a university last night and he was excited to tell me that he had randomly met another kid at the bar who was talking about bitcoin and other cryptocurrency to his friends. I guess my friend had overheard him talking and filled with liquid courage, informed them about me. It was almost as if my friend was blown away that there were more people than just me in this world of crypto. I slowly whispered to him “It’s happening” as a joke and hung up the phone.My friend had been my roommate when I discovered bitcoin in late 2012 so he has put up with more crypto conversion conversations than anyone in this lifetime should be put through. I actually got him to buy a few and he’s thanking me for it at this point.
Ultimately after our conversation, I started to think about how we define mainstream adoption as individuals and in addition as a community. Similar to the “moon” price being different for everyone involved, I think many people have different expectations for mainstream adoption. To me personally, I don’t need to have everyone using crypto on a daily basis to consider that mainstream adoption. If that happens then fantastic, but I would just consider everyone knowing that we exist as mainstream adoption on some level. If we make a similar reference, the stock market is mainstream , but not everyone in the United States use it or even know that much about it. In fact only about 40% of people even own any sort of securities and many of them just through work plans where they control almost nothing.
If we had 10% of Americans or 5% of people around the world using crypto even just once a month, I would consider the success to be astronomical. While many systems we currently have today might not work at that scale, there are many other systems yet to be developed that need that type of scale to be operational. Projects that could change how we live our daily lives only need one thing, people. This is why venture capitalists still see investing in wallets and other beginner companies as the best bet for their money. Those who can bring in the casual user are going to profit immensely in the end.
Right now the majority of applications that crypto has aren’t bringing in the average people, but project just like ours here with steem are slowly changing that. I believe that the Steemit platform has the potential to bring in hundreds and thousands of people into crypto and how it works on a beginner level. Just like how the internet used fun intuitive sites to bring in average users, Steemit is doing the same. We are a direct onramp to the rabbit whole so to speak and while many don’t realize it, just by participating they are moving us towards mainstream adoption.
In many ways we have already hit an adoption level, which many, including me never thought we would. The fact that in the past having a small tiny article on any niche site back in the day would rejoice the community and now we have massive financial companies like Bloomberg putting us on the front page, blows my mind. For many of those who came before me, we are already at the promise land and even if the community stays this size and never goes larger, we made it. Everyone’s idea of what mainstream adoption is like is completely valid. I don’t expect us to stop growing, but even with we did im just happy we made it this far and that people know we exist. What is your idea of mainstream adoption?
-Calaber24p