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How Do We Gain Mass Adoption For Cryptocurrency? Let’s Start With Merchants, First.
How Do We Gain Mass Adoption For Cryptocurrency? Let’s Start With Merchants, First.
Cryptocurrencies have a high barrier to entry.
The underlying technology is complicated, and some claim Bitcoin was initially designed to be inefficient for the sake of providing a trust anchor – creating challenges for smart contracts platforms looking to expand the capacity of blockchains to the world of applications.
As a result, Dapp user numbers continue to remain endemically low. Despite trending narratives like decentralized finance garnering more attention than blockchain-based games and other apps, the road to mainstream adoption remains an arduous task.
Cryptocurrencies, specifically Bitcoin, remain an invention of money more than anything else.
Mainstream app users are not familiar with the advantages that ‘unstoppable applications’ that run on Ethereum offer, nor do they care.
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not explicitly payment technologies, but fostering more widespread adoption of them by merchants and e-commerce stores might serve to supplement their growth well.
E-commerce is enormous and only snowballing. Retail e-commerce sales are projected to reach nearly $5 trillion globally by 2021, and the advent of better technology, more mobile phone commerce, and dominance of international providers like Amazon will only accelerate that trend.
Fiat payment rails are more than sufficient for the current iteration of e-commerce as payment processors like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal are integrated with virtually every major e-commerce platform.
If the opportunity for a turning point in the adoption of cryptocurrencies presents itself, it will be because of some monetary advantages they have over conventional payment methods.
For example, according to Shopify, PayPal-enabled merchants accept 79.1 percent of their payments via PayPal.
For domestic payments, PayPal charges a 2.9 percent fee based on the transaction amount plus a fixed fee based on the currency used. For international business, the fee raises to 4.4 percent of the transaction. Fees are not surprising, and consumers and merchants have become accustomed to them with nearly every purchase.
Kroger – the popular supermarket chain – recently announced that they would no longer be using Visa in select stores due to transaction fees. Moreover, Bloomberg reported that retailers pay approximately $90 billion in payment processing fees per year.
Some crypto fans say that cryptocurrencies can provide potential advantages in both fees and censorship, even though they also come with limitations.
First, they have minimal fees as no third-party payment processor is taking a percentage – fees only consist of on-chain transaction fees which are usually a few cents.
Second, since Bitcoin is decentralized and there is no third-party controlling the legacy cryptocurrency, there is no censorship. As the saying goes ‘not your keys, not your Bitcoin.’ If you own your private keys, you don’t have to worry about your transaction not going through, being delayed, or reversed.
So, what’s holding back Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies from being widely accepted among merchants?
Well, we can basically break that down into three primary categories: not enough awareness/users, high barrier to entry, and inconvenience in converting between fiat and crypto.
Reducing the barrier to entry by building better payment solutions with crypto will eventually lead to more awareness and users. Web extensions for using Bitcoin’s LN like Lightning Joule and Casa are already available for easy and instant payments over the web, and BTCPay Server is compatible with leading e-commerce platforms as a plugin – such as WooCommerce, Magneto, and Drupal.
“Accepting cryptocurrency payments leaves more money in the pockets of artists and fans, who’ve been unjustly extorted for too long”, says EventChain CEO, Ashton Addison. “When other retailers realize they don’t need to pay outrageous processing fees. by tapping into a global decentralized payment network, they will adopt crypto payments as well.”
That leaves the biggest problem: the inconvenience of converting between fiat and crypto.
Most merchants do not wish to ‘hodl’ long-term digital assets, and would instead prefer quickly turning received crypto payments back to fiat. Merchants typically have to go through cryptocurrency exchanges, which charge fees themselves, do not have good security track records, and are another third-party in an ecosystem predicated on reducing the roles of third-parties.
Self-hosted payment processor BTCPay Server has a fiat-conversion functionality on their roadmap, but for now, the problem is a marked impediment to further merchant adoption of cryptocurrencies. However, Bitpay has been pioneering an easy way for merchants to easily gain access to accept cryptocurrency payments and instantly convert to fiat for only a 1% fee.
Cryptocurrencies cover a lucrative opportunity of potential technical solutions in everything from advanced privacy to decentralized finance. However, at the industry’s core, Bitcoin remains the flagship cryptocurrency that is empirically an invention of money.
Payments may not be its most attractive property, but more merchant adoption in an increasingly connected globe of e-commerce is sure to be a critical gauge of furthering its mainstream adoption.
One of the most notable realities is that regulation is needed before any sides of the marketplace can switch their payment system completely.
Please sound off below! What do you think the best way to gain merchant adoption’? Do you think we need to focus on something else first? Let me know in the comments.
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What Is The Best Cryptocurrency To Invest In Right Now? (2020)
What is the best cryptocurrency to invest in right now? Yes, this may seem like a loaded question, but it ultimately comes down to preference. I have long been a believer that there will at some point come a cryptocurrency that provides more value that the current king itself (Bitcoin), but I still feel as though that day is still far off in the distance. Bitcoin has been the staple and foundation that started this revolution over a decade ago with the one crazy idea that the world could have a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that was governed by the people, and not an “authority”.
So far, the network effect is the strongest factor that keeps bitcoin in the minds of most people that are aware of it, because it’s not just a coin, its also a technology; a protocol. Decentralization and a VERY large distributed network gives bitcoin a superior power than all other altcoins listed on CoinMarketCap.com. However, that is not to say that other altcoins offer no value, in fact, a good few of them are innovating a way to new technologies and governance standards that let it stand apart from the rest. I will name a two of them that I have invested in below that are not Bitcoin, because they offer a unique selling proposition (USP).
ZCASH
Zcash has a proprietary privacy protocol attached to it. This is extremely attractive, as one of the key selling points of cryptocurrency to begin with was anonymous, uncensorable transactions. This is money as it was intended to be. I should be able to transact with anyone in the world, and not only NOT have it tracked, but keep it between me and the other consenting party. They use a method called zk-SNARKs.
This is an acronym for “Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Argument Of Knowledge”. What does this actually mean? It essentially means that “Zero-Knowledge” proofs allow one party (prover) to prove to another (verifier) that a statement is true. It allows you to verify a transaction is relevant and true without knowing its origin.
Some people view this as potentially scary, because it allows money launderers or criminals to transact in a more private way. Well, my theory is this, criminals will always find a way to do what they want and transact privately. Valuable tools should not be banned or discredited because there is a potentially negative outcome.
There is an equally positive outcome. Privacy is an unalienable right to all humans and we should all expect it and understand our rights to it. To me, that makes this coin very very powerful and very much worth exploring, especially as it is considered an “Original”. Some similar example coins that came after are Monero and Zcoin.
TEZOS
In my opinion, Tezos is the new and improved evolution of Ethereum. It is a new platform for decentralized applications (dApps) and smart contracts. Here are a few key points that make it different:
1.) On-Chain Governance – The Tezos protocol offers a formal process through which stakeholders can efficiently govern the protocol and implement future innovations. This is democracy at it’s finest. It also helps avoid controversial “Hard Forks” as we’ve seen in the past with Bitcoin (BTC) to Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and then Bitcoin Cash (BCH) into Bitcoin SV (BSV). This has a detrimental effect on the network and causes a lot of confusion, contention, and tribalism.
2.) Security – This blockchain was designed to facilitate formal verification, which helps secure smart contracts and avoid buggy code. This has been a HUGE problem with Ethereum over the years as noted in the infamous “DAO Hack“, which again proved that their protocol was not immutable and caused yet another hard fork that brought forth Ethereum Classic into existence.
3.) Liquid Proof of Stake – This is a unique consensus proof-of-stake algorithm which gives every stakeholder the opportunity to participate in the validation of transactions on the network and be rewarded for doing so. Whether you are big or small, you have a vote. This is unlike the current mining pools that we have in place where the person with the most hashing power and hardware wins the block reward, and essentially dictate the rules of the network.
I tend to think that the tech behind each blockchain is what brings it’s value. Whether or not the price is currently up or down on these coins, I believe as the masses start to see the value these innovators bring to the table, the money will follow.
If you don’t recall, it took over a year of price discovery before Ethereum finally found it’s place in the market. All this to summarize that I am very interested to see where these both end up in terms of price and user adoption over the course of this year.
CONCLUSION
So what is the best cryptocurrency to invest in right now? My final thought comes down to diversification. No matter what cryptocurrency you own or believe in, it is always a good idea to NOT put all of your eggs in one basket. Diversification allows you to spread out your wealth and provide you a bit more piece of mind and stability as we all partake in our own personal crypto journey.
If you are new to this space and are unsure what to invest in, there is an up-and-coming site that allows you to follow a strong community of cryptocurrency investors and see what allocations are in their portfolio to give you a baseline. This is a desktop and mobile app known as “eToro“. It also provides you some guides and information on each coin so you can learn what the differences of each coin are and what the full scope of their previous price, current price, and the expected future price over time. I will leave the link here for anyone that’s interested.
Please sound off below! What do you think the best cryptocurrency to invest in at this point in the game? Do you think my top two altcoin picks are unfounded? Let me know in the comments.
NOTE: This post may contain affiliate links. This adds no cost to you but it helps me focus on giving as much value as possible in every single post by being compensated for recommending products that help people succeed.
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Massive Bitcoin Stash of 40,000; Bitcoin Whale Moves $229 Million For Only 57 Cents
Massive Bitcoin Stash of 40,000; Bitcoin Whale Moves $229 Million For Only 57 Cents. As reported on May 1st, 2019, a bitcoin whale has moved over 40,000 BTC or over ($212 million) moved from one address (bc1q9sh6544xls87x7skjzyfhkty4wq7z76vn7qzq9) to another (bc1q5shngj24323nsrmxv99st02na6srekfctt30ch).
There are some theories floating around on Twitter as to who the whale is. Some people have speculated on Twitter that the whale is Bitcointalk user “Loaded” who is a well-known poster on the forum. Loaded is as well-known for his posts on the forum as he is for his stash of 40,000 BTC.
Further theories floated around on the forum itself that it was Loaded who made the transaction — although the user has not confirmed or denied that they made the transaction.
It should be noted that the Bitcoin in the address shows a pattern of moving from one address to the next for no apparent reason according to the transaction history on Blockchain.com.
Another thing to note is the first three characters of the address. ‘bc1’ means that the address is using the segregated witness (SegWit) protocol that currently accounts for 40% of all Bitcoin transactions according to transactionfee.info.
Segwit is a protocol that was introduced on the 23rd of August to make Bitcoin transactions faster and cheaper.
The amount of money used to move the $229,000 million was only 57 cents according to the data. Bitcoinist reported earlier, Bitcoin fees are often mismatched with how much the user should actually be paying. This mistake, according to researchers, was due to the fact that consumer wallets appear to incorrectly estimate the required fee.
Although the 40,000 Bitcoin transaction is no small amount, it pales in comparison to the transaction that occurred on the 10th of January this year.
A total of 130,004 BTC ($742,972,860.00) was sent to the following address. (385cR5DM96n1HvBDMzLHPYcw89fZAXULJP). To date, this remains as the second largest bitcoin transaction ever, with the largest being 500,000 BTC which occurred on November 16, 2011.
BITCOIN STASH: BITCOIN WHALES ACCUMULATE
The bitcoin whales in the market seem to be going through a period of accumulation. In fact, 100 of the largest bitcoin wallet addresses accumulated 150,000 extra bitcoin.
One news site Bitcoinist did the math on this accumulation and deduced that they came from wallets holding less than 1,000 and 10,000 BTC. So the ‘rich’ are getting richer — many of which belong to exchanges — while the less-informed crypto speculators continue dropping bags.
WHY THIS BITCOIN WHALE MATTERS
Consider this for a moment. If you were to go to a bank and you were a high profile client and wanted to make a large transfer such as this anonymous bitcoin holder made, firstly, you would need to make an appointment. Secondly, you would need to go in person during standard business hours and shake hands and meet with certain individuals and make pleasantries before you could actually conduct your business. In other words, it’s an ordeal before the transaction has even begun.
After the charade and process of meeting and greeting, you then need explain your situation. Why are you sending this amount of money? Where are you sending this money? Which bank is receiving this money? Can we record or report this transaction and your explanation to the IRS directly, or do you already have a notarized letter from a CPA? Can we see two forms or ID?
…This is just the beginning of a series of questions you might encounter when trying to move your money from location A to location B when dealing with a bank. This is all before you are actually “authorized” to move your own money.
When you’re dealing in bitcoin, you don’t need permission, you don’t need to submit ID, you don’t need to wait 7-10 business days. It happens virtually instantly with the click of a button. Understand how powerful this is. Not even the most powerful and connected of business men can bypass the security and tracking that goes on with a bank and dealing with “regulation” of the legacy financial system. Additionally, consider the banking “fees” they would impose (after they’ve approved you to move your money after vetting not only yourself, but the recipient) for moving that sum of money.
As an example, international wire transfers at Fidelity charge upwards of 3% of the total transaction amount to wire this amount. For those of you who do not want to do the math, that is $6,780,000.00 as a fee to move this money. With bitcoin, this person did it with 2 quarters and a few pennies worth of fees.
That is why this is the future. I see this technology as inevitable for the entire world to adopt, because the bankers are far too greedy. Additionally, they see no problem with what they charge and why they do it. They will continue to blow bitcoin off as a valuable means of exchanging value, but as you can see above, it’s happening and it’s very possible.
FIRST STEP TO BECOMING YOUR OWN BANK
Part of becoming your own bank is first understanding the risks and responsibilities that goes with self-sovereignty. This is an amazing gift, but should be take very seriously and with the utmost care and responsibility. There is no 1-800 number to complain to when you mistype an address or you make a mistake. There is no one that can reverse a charge, or give you a refund. This is an irreversable, yet incorruptable form of dealing with money.
I do not say this to scare you, yet rather to implore you to double check everything you do and engage in the proper research when learning about making cryptocurrency transactions. The website you are on offers a myriad of valuable information ranging from beginners to experts in the space and provides a wealth of information, as well as tools to assist you in your crypto journey.
If you are new (or advanced), I recommend obtaining a hardware wallet to store your private keys offline, safely and securely to ensure that you are not risking your life’s work. The best one with the easiest to use interface that I’ve been recently using a lot is called “KeepKey“. This device has been around for several years now and is considered a widely used and respected device. I use it personally almost every day. Additionally, I have been testing their brand new unified platform that is currently in beta and it is BY FAR the easiest to use hardware wallet experience I have used.
It is extremely impressive and I can’t wait for all of you to see it. In the meantime, their existing platform is still very intuitive and user friendly, but the upgrade that is coming definitely a game changer. For more information on this device and to purchase directly from the KeepKey’s Official Website.
What do you think? Is this the first evidence in a shift in global finance to bring cryptocurrency mainstream? Sound off below!
Cheers,
The Crypto Renegade
NOTE: This post may contain affiliate links. This adds no cost to you but it helps me focus on giving as much value as possible in every single post by being compensated for recommending products that help people succeed.
