The obstacles to crypto adoption

In the cryptocurrency space, there are a few things that veterans expect and a few things that newbies would need for further adoption. To date, there has been no solid, all around solution for both veterans and newbies alike, until now! The solution is called Alttex, but before we dig into the platform, let's discuss the market needs that it addresses.

Inability to easily pivot to other tokens/currencies

As of the time this article was written, there are 1531 cryptocurrencies listed on coinmarketcap.com. From this vast list of cryptocurrencies, there are more than a handful that have some functionality that people would ideally like to use more regularly. The problem is, it's very hard to pivot effectively from what currencies you want to hold into what currencies you want to actually use. It's not uncommon to end up transferring coins from one exchange to another just to convert to the coin you want, which can cause large delays and unnecessarily large fees.

Now that some exchanges have started to get fairly diverse selections of coins, this issue has been alleviated some. That being said, most users are not comfortable leaving their assets on the exchange which means they are still transferring money regularly. It would be ideal to secure some long term funds using your own hardware wallet, offline wallet, or paper wallet while still having a chunk of your coins available on an exchange to use when you want. Unfortunately, with news of exchanges being hacked in some capacity fairly regularly. Some people are uncomfortable leaving much money on an exchange at all, which reduces how functional those funds are by making them less accessible to the owner at times.

No effective marketplace for crypto

In addition to issues making sure you have access to the right coins at the right time, there's also an issue with finding an effective way to use the coins as an actual currency. The most popular online retailers still have not adopted cryptocurrencies and some smaller players in the market that have only accept one or two coins for transactions. Outside of the main online retailers, it's also difficult to do peer to peer transactions since people may be interested in different types of coins making it difficult to find someone that will accept your preferred method of payment.

Veterans who would like to use crypto to purchase every day items often times find themselves converting their crypto into fiat in order to make a purchase in one way or another. There doesn't seem to be any one solution for holding, converting, and using cryptocurrencies effectively in the market today. This creates a headache for crypto enthusiasts and effectively acts as a barrier for those considering entering the space. When barriers such as this are in place, it makes it hard for mainstream adoption of any cryptocurrency.

The Solution

This is where Alttex comes in. Alttex compiles all of the best of crypto into one easy to use platform. This includes:

• A decentralized exchange supporting the most popular cryptocurrencies
• Messenger capabilities to interact with other crypto users
• A crypto shop to buy and sell goods via cryptocurrencies
• A secure, multi-currency wallet

On top of all that, it provides all of this within a user friendly mobile interface. All of the items in the list above are important in their own way, so let's break this down a bit further.

Decentralized Exchange
If you look back at the history of cryptocurrencies as a whole, one of the primary intents is decentralization. Unfortunately, today a very large sum of the cryptocurrencies are deposited into centralized cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase or Binance. There are a couple fundamental problems with keeping your crypto on one of these exchanges. First and foremost, you don't own your private keys. That means the crypto is technically owned by the exchange and tracked as belonging to you in their system, making it less secure. Along the same lines, exchanges are a prime target for hackers. For the most part, cryptocurrencies underlying blockchain technology is for all intents and purposes, un-hackable. Because the entire underlying structure is typically not possible to infiltrate, most hackers turn their attention towards other methods of finding the private keys for cryptocurrencies. They could do this by gaining access to a users wallet and using the keys to transfer the coins elsewhere. This is why it's important to store your crypto securely and never share your private keys or any information that could lead to access to those keys such as a wallet seed.

The thing about centralized exchanges is they also are storing private keys, but for many people with money in the exchange instead of just one person. Naturally, these exchanges become the primary target of hackers. Would you rather hack one Bitcoin holders $10,000 wallet or a $1 Billion exchange? The larger an exchange gets, the larger the target on it's back is for hackers. The reason people put their crypto into exchanges is because they've historically needed these exchanges to be able to turn coin A into coin B. Decentralized exchanges have recently been gaining some momentum because they allow a user to maintain ownership of their cryptocurrencies but still exchange them for other coins. Integrating a decentralized exchange into their product is pivotal for the Alttex platforms success.

Messenger Capabilities
The ability to use a messenger also hits a couple of the primary purposes of cryptocurrencies, to be used for peer-to-peer transactions, and to be able to use them over long distances. The functionality to be able to do peer-to-peer transactions and do so over long distances has been available since the original implementation of Bitcoin. The issue is, in order to meet the people and discuss the transactions, you need some medium of communication as well. Historically, if one wanted to interact they would have to find the people and communicate outside of the exchange and/or wallet where they held their coins.

This can be somewhat limiting, in addition having to use another platform to communicate, you're also disclosing any information attached to this other source. For example, if you were to connect on Facebook and use the popular Facebook messenger, all the sudden the person you're communicating with has all the information from your profile. If you provide a phone number they can use that to gather more information on you as well. If you try to seek out less popular options that disclose less information about you personally, you have to find something the other party has or is willing to start using. The Alttex messenger will have some additional capabilities as well, such as chat rooms and multimedia entertainment, but the biggest perk will be how it integrates with their cryptoshop.

Cryptoshop
To extend the value of being able to communicate via the Alttex platform, you can also use the cryptoshop to buy and sell goods with cryptocurrencies. Since we've already discussed the decentralized exchange portion, you already know that we can pivot between cryptocurrencies easily within the same platform which means for once it will actually be easy to buy and sell goods for the cryptocurrency you prefer. It is currently fairly difficult to find a way to use your crypto to purchase goods directly. This framework built side by side with the other functionality that Alttex provides should finally provide the recipe for success in this area.

Crypto AltSafe
Most crypto veterans prefer to keep their money in a cold wallet for security reasons. However, since crypto trading can also be time sensitive most users do seek to hold some of their assets in hot wallets as well. This creates an environment where money needs to be transferred far more often than most would like. Through advanced security protocols, Alttex helps provide the security people seek from cold wallets while still providing all of the benefits of a hot wallet.

The AltSafe wallet also has the capability to set wait times on assets to ensure that you don't sell too quickly. If you feel you're susceptible to panic selling, having a wait period to sell your assets may be a good feature for you. Another development scheduled will be the development of an easily integrated physical crypto safe (like the Ledger Nano S) for those assets that you truly want to hold for the long term and keep highly secured.

Bonus Feature: Crypto Card Support
As you may have gathered, Alttex is all about filling in the gaps in usability for cryptocurrencies. Their team identified the most restrictive aspects of the crypto market and found user friendly ways to tackle each obstacle. As mentioned previously, having the cryptoshop makes it easy to do peer to peer interactions, but what if you want to use your cryptocurrency to make every day purchases at any store? Some cryptos support crypto card functionality that links directly to your coin wallet and handles the exchange from crypto to fiat as purchases are made with the card. Alttex allows those with crypto cards to use those in association with the wallet that is integrated into their platform as well.

Summary

From my experience, when you talk to someone who does not own cryptocurrencies about the exciting projects out there, they're very excited about the technologies and ideas. What often keeps them from joining is difficulties knowing how to turn their money into the currency they want and difficulties learning how to use the currency once they get it. There are many friends of mine that I simply do not talk to about cryptocurrencies because I know they wouldn't be comfortable with the current pain points in the space. Once Alttex releases its platform, it can be used to bridge the gap between what people expect with their finances and what cryptocurrencies can offer. Those who are not used to some of the backdoor methods of getting their currencies they want to work for them will no longer feel too uncomfortable with joining the market. Alttex will work as a catalyst towards widespread crypto adoption. I can't wait to watch this technology take off in 2018!

Here's a link to the @originalworks contest for Alttex

alttex2018