Why No Mass Adoption??: Part 1 - My Story and Yours.

Disclaimer: I may use bitcoin and crypto interchangeably in this article. Sorry. :/

Why People No Mass Adopt!? That's the question that everyone asks. It's almost like crypto is still seen as some kind of ugly baby that people just won't take a picture with. Well, news flash, IT IS! Crypto is still quite cryptic to the masses. We have yet to frame the use of crypto in a way that is truly meaningful to most end users of the geographic and demographic markets where it has been most easily adopted thus far.

I'm going to make a little series out of this for the next few weeks and I'd like your participation. We're going to document your experience and the experiences of others who have or have not adopted crypto up to this point.

First, I want you to think about your own experience getting into crypto. When did you first hear about it, what did you think and when did you actually take the steps to adopt. Also include some of those steps. I know we will likely have some overlap on stories but I think it's important for us to see and understand what our own hangups were. We can then compare them to the hangups of other people, and as a whole community understand what it will actually take to bring about mass adoption.

I'll start with my story.

I first heard about bitcoin back in 2009 when someone on [H]ardOCP mentioned the idea of hardware benchmarking by mining bitcoin instead of doing SETI@Home. I thought "Hah! that shit's illegal. I'm not gonna get caught up in that". Laughable... right? Fast forward to November 2013 and bitcoin exploded to $1200! I thought I was an idiot for not taking it seriously but didn't look into it right away. It wasn't until the next month when bitcoin crashed to $600 that I started to pay attention. I saw a post on Reddit about the crash, and started to read through it when I saw someone post about other currencies; PeerCoin, NameCoin and then DogeCoin. I googled each one and when I came across Jackson Palmer's twitter post saying "DogeCoin. It's the next big thing" my heart jumped and I frantically started to figure out how I get this new coin.

Photo via Pixabay, Source: Themerkle

I found some DogeCoin on eBay, and by the end of the day December 16, 2013, I had a wallet with 25,000 DogeCoin that I paid $45 for. From there, the DogeCoin sub-Reddit exploded in a frenzy of coins flying around with the DogeTip bot, meme's galore, and some hilarious videos that fresh DogeCoin enthusiasts started making. It was a truly magical experience and something that felt so non-serious. It felt like a game.

I look back and smile at the hilarity of my entry and it inspired much oh how I've thought about the approach that Jalapeno Inventive should take to facilitate mass adoption. You can hear more about that approach on the Side Chain Podcast

What I did learn was that the DogeTip bot was a HUGE catalyst in people adopting DogeCoin. It simplified crypto entry to a PM and a public message. It became stupid easy to be gifted crypto. That combined with the nature of the community is what allowed that sub-Reddit to grow rapidly to 20,000 subscribers in just 2 months. It was incredible.

Now, I'd like to hear your story and the stories of your crypto peers. We'll then to analyze each other's stories and build an understanding of what it took for us to get this far in terms of adoption, and how we can use those experiences to understand what it will take to get the rest of the world on the crypto boat.

See you in 7 days for Part 2.