The Number 1 Problem With Crypto
So unless you've been living under a rock in the crypto world, you will have heard about the 'J.K. Rowling' drama that took place over the past few days...
A quick backstory to frame my 'rant' properly :)
So the famed author of the Harry Potter series got a real good taste of 'crypto Twitter' over the weekend from this simple reply she made...
What happened next was...Fascinating to say the least. She got thousands of replies from people shilling their referral links to honest crypto fans trying to explain what Bitcoin means to the world.
What a mess!
It was chaos, and even a fake account started getting in on the fun, claiming that J.K. had purchased her first Bitcoin from Coinbase...
Look, I'm 100000% for crypto! I think it's going to change everything that matters for the entire population of the earth...But....And here's the big BUT...
We've. Got. To. Make. It. Easier. For. The. Normal. Everyday. Person!
The every day person doesn't care about...
- Algorithms
- Decentralization (yet!)
- Who Satoshi is!
- Proof of Work
- Proof of Stake
- Hashes
- Steem vs. Hive
- BTC vs BCH
- Mining
I mean the list can go on and on....
Here's what people do care about....
Can I use it, and do my friends use it!
And if you put roadblocks up that stops arguably the most celebrated author in the past quarter century up, from just understanding what this stuff is in 3 words or less....We've got a lot of work to do.
This is why HIVE is so important...
Bitcoin is great, and it's got the whole world thinking crypto...But using it every day for purchases and day to day activities has proven to be..A challenge.
HIVE is something the everyday person can....Figure out in 2 minutes or less;
Projects like @hiveonboard are going to bring more people onto the blockchain than we've had before because it's...Stupid simple!
Projects like @threespeak will start to attract more and more content creators fed up with YouTube's banning and their new log in process is PERFECT...Wanna know why? People understand signing in with a username and password...As soon as you start throwing account keys at them, they run and hide!
And these are the applications that will make it easy for the everyday person to not only adopt a blockchain and crypto currency, but share it with their friends and families as well.
Remember I've been ranting about 'actual use case' for all crypto...This is why HIVE can win...We can use this stuff, it's becoming a LOT easier to onboard, the community is passionate and we have the applications that will attract everyday people....
So my nugget is this...
Let everyone else try to 'explain' to people what crypto is and the blockchain can become...
We'll just use it everyday and become the example the world will follow!
Hive is great for people who like to help other people, because crypto is confusing as hell.
Oh man, on another level of complexity. And blockchain usually has the smartest guys and gals in the room running the show...Sometimes it's important to remember, not everyone is a PHd in computer science and we just like to 'use stuff' ;)
Its a jungle in the world glad there are honest people in the hive community :)
Oh this place is fantastic!
Great people, even if they don't always agree with each other...Everyone wants HIVE to win!
Great post Jon use case is what is important to get folks into to crypto and Hive is great for that and ctp and firepay are good starts. re hived and twitered for you as well
Thanks man, appreciate the support :)
I think the biggest win here is...We can use the stuff, it just doesn't sit in our wallets...The easier the onboarding gets, the better everything will be too!
Welcome to crypto where you also can have more numbers copy and pasted into a notepad than you will find in a phone book.
Gottta love simplicity and Hive offers that and I know without that simple part I would never have ventured as far as I have into the crypto world.
Exactly!
And that is so important. I think if we focus on the ease of use, and allow people to poke around by actually being a part of it...We will win in the long run.
I wish we could stop telling people that Hive had anything to do with crypto. It's a blogging site. Or a video site. Or a gaming system. Or [Insert DAPP here].
Hive is resistant to censorship and control by single individuals. That's it.
That's a great point man...A complete rebrand and just put it out there....It's a social site, that's censorship resistant....Here's how to sign up, it's easy and fun.
Could be a great angle instead of throwing 'crypto' in their face. Great point!
That's really what they're stressing over at Threespeak. Downplaying the crypto thing, even the monetisation. I'm glad we've moved away from Hive as a get rich quick scheme.
For sure, I have no idea why people got all fussy about their new log in...I thought it was brilliant for the simple fact, normal people understand username / passwords....Start throwing private posting, and private active keys...Well, it's a mess.
They got fussy quite rightly because it was sprung on everyone overnight with no explanation. I had to Skype video with a couple of people I have onboarded to fix them up. I hadn't even logged in at that point and only figured out something had changed while I was screensharing to help someone.
Aside from that roll out issue, the new system is super convenient especially for people who maintain a number of different channels!
LOL Ahhh got it. I saw the post and gave it a try right away.
Worked perfectly for me, but I could see how people would have been caught off guard.
I think long term though, it's great to get more people 'logging in' with something they feel 'comfortable' with.
The statements like below attracts new comers:
So a layman will see all the above and get attracted to it and start exploring. Scams and referral links will take them towards a different direction and they end up concluding, crypto is a scam.
I find it very had to explain it to my friends as well. Every single concept like starting from mining to everything else becomes Greek and Latin for new comers. Only a few understands it and give it a try. Others go away and never come back again.
Great points for sure.
I think they are fantastic ways to attract eye balls, the issue I think is when we lead with the claims of how great it is...And then people get stuck trying to figure out what a private posting key is compared to an active key.
The end result is like you said....Never coming back again :(
Yep especially explaining the keys has always been a biggest challenge for me as well. 😭
The majority of people have no idea how money works, but they are using it every day... When the FIAT money collapse, they will not ask how crypto works, they will run into it... lol
and we are moving slowly toward "masses" with doing things simpler... changing to username/pass system and adding later on the road crypto part...
Oh absolutely no doubt that a shift is coming.
I just think we could do much better to keep the 'everyday person' in mind when developing ways to onboard. This is why I think @hiveonboard has a brilliant set up!
Here's your account, go use it on one of these awesome applications here on HIVE!
I both agree and disagree with you.
Crypto doesn't have to be simple, quite the opposite. But the presentation, the outer level of interaction for the regular person needs to be stupid simple. That's why Coinbase has the biggest userbase from the crypto exchanges out there, because it's simple.
About your example with J.K. Rawling, I'll be honest with you. From what you described this didn't go down well. If she would have said instead of "bitcoin" - "money", do you think it would have been less chaos in the thread? I doubt it. Other than many people thinking she lost it because she doesn't understand money, there would have been just as many types of explanations and potential scams thrown at her thread, maybe even more, because more people are "informed" on the subject.
Where I agree with you completely is that 99% of people don't care a bit about any of the topics you mentioned. They care if they can use something and use it without headaches and if they'll find their friends there or if it's a suitable environment to bring them if their friends haven't joined yet.
Oh the simplicity isn't in the tech. For example, I couldn't tell you at all how a TV works. But when I press a button and it turns on, I use it everyday.
I'm not saying crypto itself should be 'simple', I'm saying our way of working with it, using it and sharing it should be....Keeping things simple leads to much more adoption.
Exactly. Great example. I used the car example instead on occasions, but yours is even better.
i try to promote 3speak to german content creators: guess what: some people are annoyed by using Private Keys. I mean its 2020 man, LastPass is basically for free.
Hey man, good to hear from you!
Yeah I think it's easier to use things folks 'know' and LastPass is a good example.
You're preachin' to the choir, Jon! I've been on this particular soapbox for a really long time... and it's amazing just how much it all mirrors the early days of the web, itself. The early "web nerds" really wanted mass adoption of their awesome "toy" but at the same time they were terrified of giving up their technical "reins" to the Internet and accept that we now had "My mom from Topeka is sharing recipes on the Internet."
But the whole "your mom from Topeka" scenario only became a reality because Steve Case at AOL created an "idiot interface" that didn't require anyone to have much technical savvy. Click the button and go. End of story.
So yeah, we need to get away from crypto (mostly) AND I think we need to distance ourselves from the "make money" angle. Creating content, gaming or whatever floats your boat is the primary driver, the rewards are merely a consequence. People don't sign up for YouTube (well some might) to make money, they sign up to make videos. But using the rewards as the lead sales pitch is folly... because most people will just end up disappointed if that's the success metric.