The Term "Cryptocurrency"'s Got to Go!

Rest In Peace

Tim Enneking from Crypto Asset Management, which oversees Crypto Asset Fund, a regulated US cryptocurrency trading fund says the term needs to be laid to rest. Enneking argues that the term "cryptocurrencies" is now outdated, and that new terminology is needed to describe the innovations being imagined and built in the blockchain industry.

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Enneking's Argument

Enneking doesn't believe that that "cryptocurrencies" themselves should be killed off, but rather the term (hence the quotation marks). Labeling everything going on in the crypto world (space, ecosystem, universe: pick one) "currencies" is DOA.

Why it's Dead

There are two problems with applying the phrase "cryptocurrency" to what's going on in the space traditionally known by that name. First, the "coins" are acting less and less like currency and more and more like equities, especially with the advent of Ethereum and it's token-based assets. Hell, even Coinmarketcap.com distinguishes between the two now.

In fact, Enneking's fund that he manages, divide the cryptocurrency space into "blue chips," "large caps," "mid caps," "small caps," "pennies," ("penny coins" seemed redundant) and "NLT" ("no longer traded").

What it Should Be Called: Assets

Enneking and is Fund has opted to call them"assets" – a nice, all-encompassing fiat word that is sufficiently vague to cover just about everything that might happen in the crypto space.

Why does this matter? Because perception is reality. If Fund Managers want to attract more investors and users to the crypto universe, then we need those investors to quickly and easily understand what the space offers. Mislabeling the space doesn't help. The name also inevitably affects how those of us already in the space view them.

What The Net Thinks

I pulled some recent search query statistics on this word "cryptocurrency" here's what I found:

The term has surged as of April of 2017, which begs to differ that not only does the term need to die but it has seen an explosion in it's usage

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Your Feedback

• What do you think is the best way to describe this growing space?
• Do you see it changing in the future at all?
• Give me your best adjective to describe "cryptocurrencies"

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