If You Were Confused Before...New Investors Beware!
Trying to explain my passion to others for everything crypto related these days has been an uphill battle...
I come from an industry that is notorious for never embracing new technology and refuses to change with the times. So telling people 'hey crypto is the future of online payments and so much more' has been...An adventure.
Slowly people have started to come around. They see that it is not all 'back alley deals and criminals' they heard about and sure while there are negative aspects to everything in life, adoption is coming...Ever so slowly.
This was supposed to be the year right?
2018 the grand year of crypto adoption!
People were going to use crypto each and every day and businesses would welcome it with open arms...
My number one beef with the crypto space is this and I mentioned it in a post a few days ago. Crypto isn't 'simple enough' for mass adoption. And with the recent news from Coinbase, (which is arguably the largest exchange to use and get your feet wet in the markets) things just got even more confusing...
Coinbase is the king!
Let's be honest, this site is going to have more pull and power in the next 2-3 years than PayPal does. Good riddance to PayPal btw :)
But with the news of Ethereum Classic being added to their coins that they support let's take a look at what we have now as options for new investors to jump into crypto;
2 Bitcoins (BTC & BCH)
2 Ethereums (ETH & ETC)
1 Litecoin (LTC)
Confused yet?
For some of us that understand the difference between Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin, Ethereum and Ethereum Classic...It's obvious which is which.
But think about this from a new investors point of view...Bitcoin is trading at around $6500 at the time of this post while Bitcoin Cash is $850. New investor says...'Forget that expensive version of Bitcoin, I'm buying the cheaper one!' Of course, Bitcoin Cash is a completely different coin than Bitcoin.
And here comes the Ethereum dilemma. Ethereum trades right now for around $500 while Ethereum Classic is at $14....Oooh Ethereum at a discount!!!!
Can we start to see the issue?
I think this is a tiny yet important example of why most people have not yet embraced crypto. It's too damn confusing!
I'm not a coder. And heaven knows I'm not that technical...But I am a marketer. And part of marketing is having a clear and concise message for your brand and your product. I'm not trying to take a single thing away from the amazing people that are behind crypto and blockchain technology. It's going to change the world and I'm certain of that...
However...Sometimes I think developers may forget about the human aspect to all this stuff. If you want people to adopt and USE your products they have to understand it and simplicity is the way to make that happen. We need to stop confusing people and make crypto accessible to all. Then and only then will we begin to see the mass adoption we all thought for sure was coming in 2018....
As for Coinbase...I'll stick to the originals always! It's much less confusing :)
(And buy lots of STEEM if they ever add it...One can dream...)
I'd love to hear your thought son this. Please do comment below :)
P.S. This is my first attempt at using the brand new steempress-io app for my wordpress blog / Steemit blog. If things seem off, I'll do my best to edit them and get it looking proper :)
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://plus1daily.com/if-you-were-confused-before-new-investors-beware/
great explanation . really it is helpful for newbies. fiat have to be replaced one fine day.
I agree completely...And hopefully PayPal is the first to go down LOL
Good points Jon... I wonder if the creator of the coins is attempting to leverage the name off of the established coin. The want to trick them into thinking it is the same.
So back to K.I.S.M.I.F is what I think... stop mudding the water folks! People confuse easily when a different message is shared about the same goal. I am not referring to you but the companies creating the crypto's in the first place. If they do not clearly explain what it is all about then that is a potential to fail. IMHO (2 acronyms in 1 paragraph... my english teachers would be upset!)
For being a non-tech guy you were able to get that plug in working... :)
Oh absolutely. It's all planned and done to capitalize off a brand.
Yeah the @steempress-io plug in was stupid simple to get installed and working. No issues at all.
I understand leveraging off a brand but, there are consequences in doing that!
Kewl... glad you have that working! :) Now is there are plugin for RR. :)
LOL Yeah I wish....You know who needs to get active lol
Great post all looks good on steempress and I am of the same opinion, why the forks? Why the cloned coins? Are there more cloned coins that we don't know about? I'm sticking with the originals too. I'm sure there is some really clever technical reason for all the confusion and the different coins I've just not learned about it yet.
Confusion. And ego I think. People don't agree so they take their toys to another sandbox.
People are afraid of what they do not understand. People who make things easier get others to join them.
Absolutely. It's not only the right way to present things but it's a fantastic business model lol Keep it simple!
I have to agree with this I am two months into crypto and still just as confused as ever. I think, for me any way, the hard part is trying to tell fact from fiction. There is a lot of both out there.
Oh absolutely. I mean, you can't go wrong with the tried and tested blockchains that actually have real world use....So for me it's things like Bitcoin, Binance Coin, Litecoin and yup.....STEEM. A lot of the things that have people all excited is pure speculation....Those coins I mentioned are used every day, no concepts and no theory...That's the biggest thing for me....Can I actually USE the crypto.
you make great sense as always Jon
LOL Way too much credit man...I still don't know what I'm doing here lol
You make great points Jon when it comes to simplicity or un-complicating things in view of the mass adoption everyone expects but we also kinda enjoy being at least a bit (but usually a lot) more cryptic than it's necessary in the cryptoshere.
Keep pounding on this subject, you do it so well, and I think eventually someone with the power to make some changes will notice.
Appreciated sir, thanks very much for the comments and support!
Appreciated
Sir, thanks very much for the
Comments and support!
- jongolson
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Hi, Jon!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on the subject.
Every morning, I drive my wife to our small shop, and before I leave for my daily errands, I always have a coffee with her, in a small coffee shop exactly opposite our shop. It's a traditional Greek "kafenion", reserved originally just for men, but nowadays women are also welcomed! :)
Anyway, back to the subject...
...the other day I was trying to explain cryptocurrency to one group of the regulars...(mostly educated pensioners .. a vet, an ex-civil servant, an ex-businessman from South Africa..and others. They are all internet literate, and a lot of them said that they are ordering things from the internet, using either their credit card or PayPal.)
Their first question, about cryptocurrency, was, who is issuing it! I did try my best to explain, but to be honest, I don't think any of them was really convinced with my mumbling about blockchain, proof of work..etc, especially in the Greek language!
...next, they asked where can they keep it? ....more mumbling from me..about online wallets, cold storage, secure passwords..blah blah... at this point, two of them started playing a Backgammon game, and others seemed more interested for the game than me! :)
Strangely, the existence of many different cryptocurrencies was easily understood...there is an analog in their everyday experience in the form of different currencies!
What really unsettled them though, was the irreversibility of the transactions! From their point of view, as buyers, that was unacceptable!
In the end, some of them said that they may buy some as an investment, even pay with it for services, -restaurants, hotels..etc- but no-way they will risk to buy with crypto something through the internet!
I think the more crypto is adopted, people will use certain types of review systems. Similar to Amazon & Ebay reviews. Of course the brings up another issue, privacy and lack of knowledge of who is buying and from who.
But it's all just beginning. I'm sure things will get much easier to adapt and trust as time goes on :)
Great article thanks for sharing!
I think we need more articles like this for the newcomers!