Mainstream adoption of Blockchain, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has been hampered by problems associated with the ease of use, negative public relations and the methodology of application, among other factors.
Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that supports P2P trading without the need for a central market function. While it is most widely known as the infrastructure on which Bitcoin runs, potential use cases are emerging in a number of industries, including utilities. Blockchain is appealing to industries whereby there is a need to accelerate transaction times, remove centralized market control, reduce the cost of performing transactions and ensure trust between different market participants.
Despite the aforementioned advantages, mainstream adoption of the technology is yet to be realized. There has been incidents of tests by a few banks and some government entities across the globe but in the larger perspective, Blockchain and its associated elements are yet to go mainstream.
Ease of application and PR
The CEO of Paxful, Ray Youssef, tells Cointelegraph that everything holding back the Blockchain from going mainstream boils down to ease of use. Youssef says that the average user is completely perplexed by how to obtain Bitcoin - blockchain value tokens - and how to use it, however, “where” to use it is a non-issue.
Youssef says:
“Once we as a community respect the user as much as we respect cryptography we will see an exponential rise in Blockchain mainstream adoption.”
George Basiladze of Cryptopay thinks that negative PR is hugely responsible for the slow mainstream adoption of Blockchain. He also believes that the industry at the moment is dominated by incompetent and unprofessional practitioners. “People should understand what they are doing and why. Just developing Blockchain projects is not enough, understanding business needs is more crucial,” he says.
However, Basiladze believes that it will be a matter of time before new projects led by very competent people will emerge, and not just developers as is mostly obtainable today.
The way it is applied
In the opinion of the CEO of Borderless technology, Christopher Franko, the prevailing reluctance in Blockchain adoption is a matter of mindset. Franko says that presenting the workability of the technology to a consumer ahead of its application has a way of creating a mental barrier which hinders easy acceptance.
“What I have learned over the years is that people don’t really care how the technology works. I mean, some do but most just want to buy their desired product and move on. There needs to be a reason other than "this is really cool technology" to use crypto,” says Franko.
Franko cites an example with Borderless technology launching their PoC for the voting dapp. He explains that the people voted without any idea of what platform they were working on: “It's like the people using the Internet every day without understanding TCP/IP or HTTP.”
Accessibility and usability
Another problem identified by Franko is the accessibility and subsequent usability of the associated cryptocurrencies of these Blockchains.
He notes that getting the regular society to use these cryptocurrencies remains a major hurdle to cross. Regarding this, Franko explains that instead of the crypto community concentrating on where and how to spend cryptos, the focus should be on how to earn cryptocurrencies.
“If people have crypto, places to spend it will naturally form,” says Franko. “This is the very basis of the EXP.LIFE project that my company has been working on.”