RE: We Get It. Cryptocurrency Is Hard. Here's Why.
There is a perception barrier between those who are immersed in cryptocurrency and those who are coming from a fiat world and trying to understand cryptocurrency. Most people do not understand all the computer-eze.
Some people understand how to trade stocks so they will trade crypto the same way. They think they understand the basics of crypto - there is a distributed ledger and a set of keys and there are things called "wallets" but they don't understand how it all works and why it is so safe until they actually try to take possession of their crypto.
Personally, I have done some programming so I have compassion for the developers (which protects me from a lot of anger). I have also done some stock trading so I know how markets work.
When I first tried to take possession of my crypto, I went to MEW and it gave me this paper wallet thing and I had very little understanding of exactly what it was. I thought it meant that I had some kind of an account somewhere. I didn't know where the keys came from. When I tried to figure out where the keys came from, I ran into a lot of information about SHA hashes and cryptography which is difficult to understand. I found a blog that tried to explain keys and it did a pretty good job and I looked in the comment section and someone asked where keys come from. The author of the blog said "from your wallet". This is the typical kind of techie answer that the normies don't understand. (I think a better answer is that they are made by a random number generator and then you need software to hash them into the right format. They don't just appear.) People also need to know that keys are just random numbers and they don't hold value until they are connected to the ledger and the ledger knows nothing about them. Your public key is like a mask of your private key, etc.. Wallets don't store coins, they generate keys, store keys and have software for connecting to the ledger and making transactions.
This stuff can be simply and plainly stated but it is rare that it is.
I think there has to be some kind of meeting in the middle. I fully recognize the importance of streamlining crypto and making it so easy to grasp that the average user who knows very little about how they actually work can utilize them. At the same time, I think there needs to be some selective pressure. In the same way it might be imprudent to make it so easy to get a home loan that literally anyone can do it in one click without any foresight and planning, it may be imprudent to push mass adoption without putting pressure on users to actually bring themselves up to speed in some sort of way.
Yep. The simple stuff gets glossed over sometime. It's like if you were going to teach someone to drive a stick shift for the first time, would you go into elaborate detail on how to open the car door? How to insert the key into the ignition? .How to put on the seatbelt? Which peddle was for breaking and which for gas? There's a lot of assumed knowledge in crypto and for some you have to start with explaining what cryptography actually is or even how to get on the internet safely. It's not easy to figure out where someone else's true starting point is.
I've been trying to help with http://understandingblockchainfreedom.com/
And with posts like this: How Do You Teach Experience? What Will Your Cryptocurrency Story Be?