Topic: "Crypto will never reach mass adoption if it does not before more user-friendly" (Read 340 times)

What do you mean by centralized altcoin? Perhaps, yes.
However, up to this point, I still hope that Bitcoin becomes a more widely adopted alternative payment than altcoins. By seeking solutions to Bitcoin's limitations, at least Bitcoin's existence is more reliable compared to most altcoins that are created solely for developer profits.

At the very least, blockchain technology can be used by many people as an experiment. Until now, the implementation of blockchain technology continues to grow, but at a slow pace. It seems that the presence of governments or official institutions has control over the slow adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency.

I agree with what you've said. Crypto is complicated and can be hard to understand by everyone. Even when I'm starting to learn about crypto back then and even until now, sometimes it can still be hard. But I think everything is hard at first especially now that there are more technological advancements. Middle-aged to older people are having a hard time learning how to use their mobile phones so I think it's normal for others as well to have a hard time learning or getting into crypto. But I think the younger generation is more capable of adapting to the fast changes of technology. In the future, more people can and/or will adapt crypto tho it might take quite some time for that. Aside from that, we also need a more efficient way of teaching crypto easily for others to understand.

The thing is, if any project promised a 10x for investors it's a red flag for someone like me, but I have once be proven wrong, few projects did promised 10x and they did more than 10x for their investors in 2021, a good example of such project is Hex from Richard hart, almost everyone in crypto hated Richard because of his lifestyle and facts he talks about, yet all the supposed nonsense he speak back in 2020 all came to reality, it's on the investors to either believe in the projects they choose or see them as red flag and avoid them, still what will happen will happen.

I agree with you and I continue to reiterate as I have already argued in one of my threads that people started using the camera when smartphones had one and therefore there is no need for other applications that all do the same thing but integrate LN payments or onchain from other apps (applications are required).  So commenting on OP's thread it is actually true that it is not very intuitive (even if the post is talking about ETH it seems to me) and I agree that to reach the masses there is still a lot of work to do and simplify to a minimum.  Even LN to this day is absolutely implausible to bring it to the masses without a very good computer education.

When everyone is aiming to have a Bitcoin, Bitcoin will become expensive and maybe kept as a luxury item since its supply is finite while adoption is ever-growing so we might find ourselves not wanting to part with our ever-increasing asset and wanting to keep it for maximum possible profit. So I agree that it is possible that an altcoin will be the one used for daily transactions and Bitcoin will be kept in stash as we will find ourselves keeping it for more profit.

I personally don't think software being user-friendly is related to mass adoption, that only relates to the current adoption. Mass adoption is a completely different story...

I hate to say it, as I'm a firm believer in self-custody, but the reality is mass adoption will never be based on self-custody. This is solely for the "innovation" stage of Bitcoin's adoption. To think that the majority of the population would even want to be custodians of their money is simply ridiculous, like everything else, they will want to rely on a third party to do it for them. Ideally a reliable one.

I used to think that mass adoption would be a shift from relying on banks to the population adopting self-custody and making them obsolute, but now I realise it will simply be the population adopting a self-regulating currency, ie one with fixed inflation model, and moving away from fiat, and the reality is this service will be served by crypto-based banks. Likely the same banks in existence today.

I realise many will find my comment of bad taste or something, but this is simply being realistic. Given that already 25% of investors have lost their Bitcoin, is it really realistic to think that the wider population who no doubt have even less experience being custodians of Bitcoin would take on this role, knowing there's a 1 in 4 chance they will fail miserably? It doesn't seem worth the risk for most people.

You made a valid point that for massive adoption of  crypto currencies, it is crucial to make them easy to use and accessible for general public. However, it is true that crypto industry has made significant technological advancement during the recent years, but still there are many barriers including complexity of technology, security, and above all regulatory issues which need to be addressed on global level for its widespread adoption and to win the confidence of investors and general public.

No, the default state is far from convenient. A lot of UI/UX development iterations are being made to progress on how to make Bitcoin easier to use, its default state never has any user-friendliness. Besides, a lot of supporting factors and the ecosystem surely lack the easiness compared to centralized entities. It is not a matter that people feel they can't have control, they just don't bother digging deeper about it.

Altcoin spaces have a lot to offer and it is interconnected with diverse spaces, people blindly assume it as a finance innovation coupled with many sectors such as art, games, music, etc. That promises are offered by those altcoin projects. In fact, some of them are truly captivated by what those projects could offer, not specifically directed toward bitcoin use cases.

Bitcoin by it default state is a user friendly cryptocurrency, but it's the people that go against it because they feels like they can't have control over it, while those that are investing with bitcoin, few of them make this mistakes by going centralized instead of being decentralized with their bitcoin, sone don't even have an idea about the difference between bitcoin and every other cryptocurrencies, these are the first discouragements we encounter in making bitcoin a user friendly to those coming into it new.


What the people want in cryptocurrency is bitcoin, but they don't know what distinguish bitcoin from altcoins, they got carried away by their adverts and influencers or promoters, but some were already getting exposed to this while some were still in the dark, but with time, things will normalize.

Bitcoin adoption will not happen overnight and at the same time. For now, bitcoin is not for everybody because many people understand nothing about the network this might be because of illiteracy or ignorance. It will take only a person that can read to understand the Bitcoin network and many people in my area will always prefer fiat because it is very easy to understand. So it will be difficult for bitcoin to penetrate places that have a high rate of illiteracy. But Bitcoin adoption will be appreciated by people that are informed because with little reading or studying they will be able to understand the network. So we shouldn't expect adoption until certain measures have been put in place.

Well, he's got some points. To operate crypto you need to learn some things, and most people just don't want to do that. But I'm not sure it's possible to increase user-friendliness without losing crypto's features.

Both are almost the same when it comes to learning about the technical part and that is why it is difficult for grandparents to learn to understand how to make money in Altcoins and Bitcoins. But if you look at the emergence of ATMs from bank products, parents also have difficulty accessing them because they have to use an ATM machine and the same goes for the banking system using Internet Banking Mobile (M Bangking) which uses a smartphone. I think this difficulty is due to a lack of knowledge about technology and the internet or it could be because their previous lives did not use this method.

If it can be simplified and user-friendly as you say then I'm sure this adoption will continue to spread throughout the country and including rural areas. If paid special attention and from the experience of those closest to me, the difficulty lies in knowledge of technology and the internet being more dominant, especially for people who are categorized as grandparents so they find it difficult to adapt to this system.

Everyone is just not quite familiar yet.

Imagining crypto is like imagining a perfect product with unappealing packaging. This is what makes the selling value of crypto unattractive to the public. We know that blockchain technology applies a very fair system.

I believe that the existence of blockchain is truly needed by the general public. However, the public is not interested in using it because there are products with more attractive packaging, even though in reality, their systems are not better than crypto.

The statement on Reddit is not wrong. Crypto really needs to be easy to use by anyone, even in cunning ways. Because the adopted system is honesty and fairness, acting like a marketing expert of centralized companies is not a problem.

They should be publishing the articles which give out solution and not depict the problem that already exists and unresolved. The article suggest how peeps are confused about use of paper wallets, hardware wallets etc etc. Not sure why this is way to go when community publishes articles like this one.

Anyways on the other hand, blockchain is already burdened and the biggest reason behind this is open source tech. You can’t control anything about it and hence the entire discussion is in vain.

I mean yeah user friendliness is super important for mass adoption because people are only gonna use things that are super convenient (except for the people who are REALLY into it, but that will always be not most people). Like, to compare, stock investing is mainstream, but only a small minority of hardcore stock investors are gonna be doing anything beyond setting up a basic retirement fund that automatically DCAs their paycheck or whatever. But with Bitcoin the point is to be decentralized so that takes away the conveniences of centralized services. So mass adoption is either gonna happen through centralized services, or user-friendliness of using this stuff in how it was intended has gotta get to the point where people don't need to know much to use it.

It's always going to be a little complicated for a first timer, but yeah improving user friendliness is a big step needed in making Bitcoin mainstreamable.

Simple research can give a person the answer.  For a non-tech-savvy person, Bitcoin is a bit complicated because of the learning level of the person.  There is nothing to do about it because everything is complicated on that kind of person. 

I agree that if anyone won't spend time in learning the ropes of an item, it will be difficult for him to use it regardless of how easy to use that item is.  So a person must spend some time learning the basics.

The cryptocurrency world is mixed up, and some think altcoin-related things are fancier than Bitcoin. They did not look into the fundamental issues. As time goes on, I don't think the disparity will be much more distinct, thus people would relate Bitcoin with altcoins.

There is a gist toward cryptocurrency in general and Bitcoin from that thread, though. Bitcoin is surely a simpler network compared to others, but it is necessary we also need to empathize with regular or non-technical savvy users.

I have seen post and questions about how and if possible is it for a newbie and non tech savvy person to learn about bitcoins. I believe these can of questions start as a result of how non user friendly and complex some exchanges and wallets have made their platforms to look. It can be discouraging for a newbie to cryptocurrency to try to get used to using bitcoins on their own, and because they do not want to make mistakes, they may be forced to not used bitcoins yet, a hindrance to mass adoption. With more user friendly platforms for bitcoins, more people will be able to easily understand it and how to use it.

Nowadays it's hard to see them being friendly. You see the sign that it's already a CBDC. That's proof that the world has been thinking about adopting non-crypto technology. The system as opposed to centralized governance makes them reluctant to use crypto. Indeed, digital money is currently being used and crypto is history in the process. Despite the high hopes that mass adoption will occur. At this time I am happy that Crypto is legal as an Asset.

I really agree with the title, cryptocurrency is still in the early days and I believe that there is still a lot of room to grow.
Being user friendly platforms is a must because some people thinking that if you will use cryptocurrency, you must be techy because at first you can't use cryptocurrency without internet connection and I believe that there are still lot of people are not yet introduced with internet connection or some don't want to use it.

Till date I still can't figure out how to use the lightning network on Bitcoin and I have been into crypto since 2017, I know that I can learn this in just a day or let's say few hours but it's not needed I believe, and it feels like another heavy weight that I am not ready to lift.

Many projects have their weakness and advantages, some are less easier to get involve with and some are hard, pulse chain for example, I found it difficult to get involved with, to use the bridge people waited for day for ordinary swap.

Which crypto is more user friendly shouldn't be the title of the day for discussion, but a proper manual instruction on how to use will be welcome, I hate trying to get Into a project and I will have to use my time to search about how to use the project.

if a project will be more user friendly and simple to use it's on the developers, they need to make their coins user friendly by making a tutor available on the projects website themselves, it's a shame that most projects leave everything to users to figure out on their own, some time I will have to join a projects telegram channel and ask how to set up their wallet or the link to their software.

I know which cryptocurrency will become popular and user-friendly. This currency will not require independent storage, there will be no risk of losing money by mistakenly sending it to the wrong address, it will be simple and accessible to everyone, and so on. Haven't you guessed yet? This is CBDC.  

/sarcasm off.

In general, I believe that cryptocurrencies are already becoming a little more user-friendly (not all, of course) thanks to the same smartphones. There are apps that allow to interact with cryptocurrencies with a couple of finger touches. Of course, this attracts more new users, because not everyone wants to bother with desktop versions. So, we can assume that the process of mass adoption occurs, to some extent, just thanks to the simplified UI.

There is an implicit message in your post and what you want to convey is to prioritize user experience over speculative gains and ensure crypto becomes a technology that empowers and benefits everyone. I strongly agree.

Of course, with efforts to simplify transaction procedures, remove confusing jargon, and improve security measures and bring crypto into the hands of everyday users for mass adoption.

It's true that when the internet came into existence it was difficult to use, but as time goes on and many people got involve to learn & understand how it works & how to use it effortlessly so did it become more easier base on it's mass adoption & common general usage, and likewise is that also applicable to Bitcoin/cryptocurrencies, because the more people get to understand how it works and how to use it, so is it likely to be possible for even both grandma & grandpa to be able to use Bitcoin effortlessly to send, receive USDT & Btc with the less cheapest network & non-custodial wallets (Trc20 & Segwit Btc Electrum wallet). Only if we could have someone to explained it to the best of their ability.

I think the existing wallets like Electrum are already quite user-friendly, but the protocol itself is fundamentally unfriendly and there's nothing that can be done to change it. There is no room for error - lost password/wallet file/seed means all coins are lost, wrong address means coins are lost, etc. With fees people without experience can either encounter stuck transactions or overpay on fees. Wallet interfaces help communicate this to the users, but still a lot of people don't pay attention.

What I don't think many people grasp is the time involved new technologies to be adopted. Go back to in the 90s when the Internet was catching on everybody thought it was this great new thing. But it really came into existence in early 1983. And before that for decades you had people dialing in through modems too other systems.

This is about money camera this is about financial independence.

So now take a look at it from that perspective, credit cards came along in the 1950s and it was still 30 plus years before they became ubiquitous for use in our society. I even remember back in the mid to late 80s where many places did not accept credit cards it was cash or check only. When online banking became a thing it still took a while for people to really accept Titus. And now there are a lot of banks that you could only deal with online. It does not have to become more user friendly, between all the web wallets and other wallets that make it incredibly simple to buy and sell crypto. It just has to hit that tipping point of use where it's everywhere.

I am not a fan of square and their wallet and the entire cash app thing. Let me make that clear. But if they ever get off their ass and fulfill their promise of every one of their terminals taking cryptocurrency payments you're going to see usage and adoption goes through the roof. Because this might be in New York centric thing, I see their terminals everywhere in small businesses.

-Dave

Crypto will be hard to learn if the person is not really interested about technology or they are not prepared to read long informations about cryptocurrency since they want to shortcut because there expectation to earn quick money on it is so high.. Also its normal for people to find something difficult especially when they don't know anything about it. Its just they can learn depends on how eager they are to gather helpful information so that they can adopt cryptocurrency and its technicalities.

Everything takes time and I am sure Crypto will need it too. It took millions of pages of data to make GPT Model that provided ChatGPT and its adoption was so fast all around the world.
However, the actual time that it took to become that good was since the release of the Internet. It took several years to generate this information and provide it.

The only problem I have with the current state of Crypto developers is that they are busy making stuff for bucks, not for the technology. They are not willing to make a huge change in the world with their contributions.

They’re looking for user friendly, but do they know what they’re talking about?!

I’d like them to explain how this’d work without losing functionality. The simplest UI we can have is a send/receive button with extremely basic transaction history information and balance. Show fees in USD only. If the user needs to receive BTC, they’ll need to have a single Bitcoin address that never changes. They’ll need to have no change addresses. This is the most basic you can get. And I agree, this kind of UI would attract more than Electrum orBitcoin Core.

But what do you do then? As soon as the user learns fees are actually fixed in sats, not in USD, they’ll be confused. As soon as they’ll learn their behavior of using a single address for all transactions is wrong, they’ll be confused and mad. You can’t lose functionality to win new users. Either they roll with us or they remain stuck in the fiat system where they are. The most fascinating part of Bitcoin is where you realize you have free will for your money, why lose this feeling because at that point the “simple UI” will be no different to a classic banking app..

Ethereum isn't very user-friendly, but that doesn't have anything to do with Bitcoin. I mean, sure, giving cash to someone is easier and there are many people that find anything else difficult. But making a BTC transaction in Electrum is not more difficult for me than making a bank transfer. In both cases you deal with numbers and symbols, and with a bank transfer it can even be harder if it's an international payment or official transfer to a bank account (where you need to enter tons of data before you're done). There's an issue of responsibility that you have if you make a mistake, and there can be issues with transaction speed.

But if someone wants a faster and more familiar way, they can use a centralized service. From what I've seen in videos, it seems there are services that are very user-friendly, as long as you're okay with custodial storage, and since these people seem to be okay with banks, they're probably fine with that as well. So the user-friendly way exists as well, I believe. And it's not like non-custodial wallets are hard to figure out.

Those kinds of features are just like how people make it look like it's the more "fascinating" one instead of just having the precise feature that you need. It's to make it look more buffed and better, but in reality, it's not being used. A lot of it is, not just in cryptocurrencies but also in just software in your computer and not being maximized to its full potential.

We really need more education for those interested in crypto.

The difficulty is not only associated with altcoins. Bitcoin is not easy also to learn about the technical parts. Grandpa could be a busy man who doesn't have the time to study what will disturb his old brain.
Not so many people will struggle to make money and also struggle to learn how to save their money. That is why many resorted to fiat and the banking system.

I know that as time goes on many things would be made user friendly. I remember when you need to run the whole blockchain in your computer in order to participate in bitcoin. But today the server can easily be reached by the wallet software developers and we can easily interact with blockchain through a simple application.
Bitcoin will eventually hit mass adoption and things will become less complicated with them.

If grandma can surf the internet why can't grandpa understand crypto more easily. Wouldn't if the features introduced in ETH and Altcoins were complicated, BTC's opportunities would be much better and to be honest, the difficulties also collectively come in bitcoin. Of course this is a problem for older people and it is very difficult for them to understand how ETH and other altcoins work, but if there is an easier way then it is worth considering, so far is there any way to simplify it and the answer is probably no.

As long as education is not carried out properly, it is possible that awareness to understand will still be quite difficult, especially when it comes to age, some people do not understand the internet and technology. I feel this when I see the closest people and they never even know what exchanges, wallets, bitcoins and altcoins are, of course it is very difficult to achieve this adoption to parents because there are many things that must be taught to them.

This is correct; I believed the same thing. Many people wanted to know how to purchase and sell Bitcoin so that they could do so whenever they wished. That is why some people prefer to use centralized exchanges because they make buying and selling easier than peer-to-peer transactions, which can be difficult to see depending on your location.

Gaining information about everything you said is beneficial, but not everyone has the time to learn everything, and it is not vital for them to know everything before purchasing Bitcoin.


When the security of centralized exchanges was compromised, many with limited information assumed that Bitcoin or cryptocurrency was a hoax and would not see widespread adoption.

I believe that individuals need to get more understanding in order to distinguish between centralized and decentralized exchanges and to cease generalizing centralized exchange flaws to Bitcoin in general.

They are, but silly outdated exchange software is not updated with Segwit BECH32 address recognizer even in 2023, which causes sending to these addresses fail. Otherwise native segwit would have been the golden standard a long time ago.

Personally I do not implement P2WPKH-P2SH ("3") address support at all, just native segwit, and legacy addresses for people stuck using outdated software. Taproot support is also questionable and it's only really useful if you are making scripts. Otherwise it is not much different from native segwit. Of course, support for sending to all of those addresses are important (and only involves implementing Base58 and Bech32 decoding - which would already be present if you are supporting legacy + native segwit), it's just the wallet generation part where you can safely stick with legacy and native segwit, like Electrum.


Also valid, though in my OP I was referring to Layer 1.


Arguably they shouldn't have to, that is the job of the wallet software to handle. All users need to know, are fee priorities "High" "Medium" and "Low", which the software automatically chooses the appropriate sat/byte value depending on network conditions, and "Refund" which is just a double spend using RBF (which is on the brink of being enabled globally for the entire network anyway).


I disagree about shitcoins, I don't see anyone using something like $PEPE as cash material. Or even DOGE which has not received an update to its full node for an entire year.

CDBCs are more concerning, but then again it will probably just be implemented as another way for your banks, Paypal and co. to store your money. In other words, people don't actually have to learn how to use the CDBC because their financial apps stay the same, it's just the banks being forced to adapt to that. That's how I believe people will eventually be made to use CDBCs.

There is a part of reason in this. If Bitcoin were to one day be used with the same adoption that the internet and cell phones are used today, there should be very user friendly applications, but I don't think it will ever be used with that level of adoption because of how valuable it is. Most likely it will be CBDCs or some shitcoins that everyone will use on their mobile, while Bitcoin will tend to be treasured more as something valuable. Even with highly developed LN or other solutions it doesn't make much sense to spend Bitcoin and store dollars or CBDCs, rather the trend will be the opposite.

"Now even grandma can surft the net". Yea only because all '00 grandmas are dead... 20 years have passed. I remember teaching my grandmother about 20 years ago how to use a mobile phone (old phone, without internet, just sms and calling options). It took me weeks of patiently trying and asking what she remember every time we saw each other. Unfortunately no success. Unfortunately, it happens that before the old generation learns a new technology, they leave this world faster if they are interested in learning at all, because they usually stop chasing the new technologies and focus on relationships.

I agree that crypto needs to be simpler for average user, but its not like every todays grandma needs to know how to use it.

Most of the content from this crosspost is about altcoins, and this section is for only BTC discussion, so we have to look at it on the side of BTC. Security, privacy, pseudonymity would always come above convenience in the BTC network. Centralized exchanges helps their users hold their keys, it is convenient but unsafe, backing up seed phrases to the cloud, or just saving it anywhere online is convenient, but unsafe, storing all your BTC in an online wallet is convenient, but unsafe, etc. People must understand that controlling their money themselves should take some of their time to learn how to do it well, but BTC will reach mass adoption without compromising its decentralization or security for it.

Of course, all conveniences are in all centralized services, all features have been provided perfectly so that you're more complacent. On the other hand, there are regular fees that are stifling because they're not basically free.
Crypto educates people to start thinking technically, more carefully and slowly before executing transactions. You can get all of this for free which won't be given in formal schools.

This are just Alticoins difficulties and not related to bitcoin at all. The only thing related bitcoin is how to get a good self custodian wallets and this also wouldn’t be much of a problem if many people become involved into bitcoin, at least if people could suggest banks or distinguish between mortgage and regular banks to each other in fiat systems, then the more bitcoin spreads the more the knowledge of better wallets will also spread.

As for issues concerning bumping transactions or canceling them this also isn’t a big problem. Just like it was stated internet has become easy but it wasn’t so in the early stages, so once people get involved they will learn mostly through experience. If Grandma can today navigate between social media platforms then this also would not be hard.

Lastly all these are still not known because of lack of its  awareness once the government becomes its user friendly then there will even be public awareness schemes that would just address this problems.

So to me it is not a problem at all if only you’re holding bitcoin and not involved in Altcoins or even trading.

Bitcoin is hard too.

People still don't know if legacy, segwit and native segwit addresses are compatible with each other.

You could be a target of dusk attack and not many people know how to not spend the dust transactions.

Not many people aware of lightning network and how to open a channel.

Not many people know what is CPFP, RBF and sat/byte.

After all either Bitcoin or altcoins are hard to understand if people don't want to spend few hours everyday to learn about it.

Cross-post from r/Cryptocurrency on reddit (I did not write this):


The funny thing is, most of these difficulties are in features introduced by ethereum and other altcoins

This is why its important to not overdo your network with useless features for developers and crypto bros (like tokens) and to stop your community on selling out its users on the promise of 10x or any kind of silly price hikes.

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Wanted to put r/Cryptocurrency in the title but I ran out of title space.