TLDR:

1) The barrier of entry is too high
2) What's the point of owning something digitally
3) Casino culture
4) It's dangerous and full of scammers
5) It's immature

I’m well down the crypto rabbit hole. I’ve collected and created hundreds of NFTs, joined DAOs, participated in on chain governance, claimed dozens of airdrops, went to meetups, hackathons, the list goes on.

You could say I’m a huge believer in digital ownership and decentralized networks.

However, lately I’ve wanted to try and challenge my beliefs. It’s easy to have conviction in where the future of this tech is going. But I’m curious as to why this space still gets so much pushback from the general public.

Keep in mind I’m in no way an expert on crypto, however I did think it might be an interesting experiment to purposefully seek out opinions that challenged my own beliefs.

So I watched dozens of YouTube videos, spoke with my friends, my girlfriend and basically anyone else who doesn't interact with our little bubble on a daily basis and came to the conclusion that there were 5 core ideas and misconceptions holding the space back.

1) The barrier of entry is too high

There are too many steps a user must make before they can collect their first NFT or complete any other on chain action. Seed phrases, hot and cold wallets, metamask, staking, layer 2s — it’s too much information that the average consumer shouldn’t need to even know about.

Punk 6529 made a great comparison to Instagram on the Raoul Pal podcast by explaining that although he’s super into python, programming and other nerd shit that instagram is built on. The average consumer isn’t rushing to download Instagram because it’s been built on python.

The same should be said about the blockchain.

2) What’s the point of owning something digitally?

Most people don’t seem to care about NFTs because once you buy a digital collectable there’s not really much else you can do with it, except pray that it goes up in value so you can sell it. If the average consumer thinks right click saving an image is just as good as owning a digital collectable, how should we expect them to care at all.

I own hundreds of pieces of digital art that I’ve collected over the years that are now buried in the pages of my OpenSea account and while there are platforms like gallery.so and oncyber that let users create virtual galleries, there really hasn't been a mainstream use case that allowed users to truly show off their digital goods.

Until artists, influencers, businesses and other entities start using these tokenised tools to track their community and begin offering valuable incentives, people will continue to not care.

Crypto games can also make an attempt to make the general public care, but until we have a hit game that people genuinely want to play and not speculate on, we won't be any closer.

Flexing a rare Fortnite or CS go skin makes sense within those games because there’s hundreds of thousands of users you can social signal to. The best use case of this we’ve seen so far was the boom in NFT profile pictures on platforms like X. Where users were able to show off something they digitally owned. However, beyond the profile picture and cover image there’s not much other real estate to put your digital goods on display for the world to see.

I personally think we need more irl+url activations to help cement the idea in people's minds that digital items do exist.

3) Casino culture

One critique I constantly heard during my research was that crypto was just one big casino. Which if I’m being honest, there is some truth to. In reality most people (myself included) often buy coins and other NFTs as short term bets that we think will make us money.

As much as I love collecting digital goods and supporting artists I’m not going to sit here and lie and say that I’m not in this space because of the money. I can admit it’s a huge factor but not the only factor that I value when I participate in the space.

The extreme volatility of crypto makes it as easy to make $100,000 as it is to lose everything you’ve ever invested in the space.

It’s a double edged sword. While the speculative nature of crypto has created entire careers for previously starving artists, developers and builders it has also caused financial ruin for thousands of people who have ended up with the short end of the stick.

I don’t have the answers on how to solve the ever present casino culture of crypto. But I personally have tried to stop fanning the flame by ignoring the majority of shitcoins and other short term speculative bets, in favor of long term connections and contributions to the space.

4) It’s dangerous and full of scammers

We all know crypto is the wild west right now. There’s scams happening every day and I’m sure by the time you finish reading this sentence someone has just been scammed. It’s unfortunate that the space attracts so many bad actors, but that doesn’t mean the underlying tech should be ignored.

Take a look at the mob, one of the first organizations to adopt mobile phone technology to conduct their illegal activities. It’s unfortunate but criminal activity usually intersects with emerging technologies, because of the regulatory and educational lag that gives bad actors the opportunity to stay ahead of authorities.

One wrong move and your entire wallet could be drained. Which is where I believe centralized institutions like Coinbase come in to help protect the consumer. Your average consumer shouldn’t have to worry about managing the keys to their wallet or having to know if they're about to sign a malicious transaction. Coinbase should be scanning contracts and making people go through multiple approvals before signing any transactions that have been flagged by the system.

While it should be an option to be self-sovereign, it shouldn’t be essential.

5) It’s immature

You’ve all seen them by now, the shitcoins with the most absurd names you’ve heard in your life. I won’t name any names but Solana has produced some outrageous coins that have been pumped and dumped.

While I personally love the silly, carefree nature of crypto, I do think it can often come at our own expense. The more racist or silly coins we produce the more people look at the space as one big joke.

Which has brought public perception of the crypto space to an all time low.

I see the humor, but it sometimes feels like we’re still in grade three laughing at penis jokes at the lunch table. Perhaps, this is just because it’s still such a young space.

Once again I don’t have the answers on improving this other than trying to redirect our energy to genuine projects and creators.

So what was the point of all this?

I wanted to take the time to challenge my beliefs and try to empathize with the general population's perception on cryptocurrencies and digital collectables. While I’m still a huge believer in the future of this tech, I think it’s good to often listen to the things we don’t want to hear.

I believe there is some truth in the majority of the critiques on crypto and these so called ‘normies’ should be given a chance to be heard.

I hope this has planted some seeds of ideas in the minds of the people building the future of the blockchain.