A few days ago I had a FaceTime conversation with a very good friend of mine whose opinion really matters to me and it naturally followed from a conversation that I had just had the very evening before. We got onto the subject of crypto and in both cases the guys sucked in their cheeks as if to say WTF because of the prevailing sense of crypto's relationships with scams.
More to the point, the first conversation quickly revolved around the question of what I use crypto for and my honest and immediate answer was that I had and have never used crypto for a single real world transaction. It wasn't me who bought a pizza for 15 BitCoin all those years ago. The nearest I have ever come to real world usage was the fund raiser that I ran on Noise:Cash a few years ago. In that case I retained the BitCoin Cash and passed on its fiat equivalent to the GoFundMe page that had been set up on the beneficiary's behalf. Forgot Celsius, but given how BitCoin Cash has crashed since, I sustained a heavy loss in doing this. I don't dwell on this too much as it was ultimately for a good cause and that was all that mattered even though sadly the cancer (that we were raising funds for treatment for) did take him far to early.
As tragic as this is (and it is, given his young age and the fact that his young family were left devastated) this is the closest I have come to real life usage. Forget any sense of loss or gain (that wasn't why I did it) it just shows the biggest single problem crypto faces. Unless we start using it in the real world (which means getting gas under control) the fact is that it will never become anything more than a highly volatile risk investment.
Three things to add here. Firstly concerning gas, it actually is an ongoing problem which continues to make banks (as much as we hate them) a more viable and realistic option. Secondly acceptance, I don't know anywhere that I can go (possibly online, but I have not searched that far tbh) and say can I pay in crypto. So there is little or no outworking, i.e. real purchasing power for my crypto) and here within lays the real big problem. Thirdly, with the increase in legislation and regulatory requirements, whether it be the MiCA model (EU) or the Clarity Act (US), the fact is that the resulting legal conformity and restrictions are highly likely to stablise those crypto assets that survive. This means that they will become a less attractive investment prospect.
In fact the only entities that seem to readily accept crypto payments, and for obvious reasons, are email scams of which plenty abound, either by appealing to our greed coupled with our good nature or our base nature.
The typical Nigerian Scam draws on both our greed and our desire to help another out.
In the name of mighty Jesus, I am so happy to have find you in his glory. I have to have from my poor dead grandma $10m but cannot access to it. If you can the help me and send to me your details I can share to you $2m. Thank for the love of kindest most gracious of all Jesus Christ to have met you.
And yes - the English is usually that bad, if not worse!
The blackmail scam is even more insidious and it is designed to provoke shame, guilt and fear.
Dear <name>. You are a sick disgusting pervert and I have planted malware on your computer and see what you do in the night. I watch you in your filth through your camera and see what you are viewing online. I have recordings of your screen and what you are doing when you are on your computer and if you don't sent me 0.001 BTC by <given date> I will share your dirty little secret with all of your contacts. Please send your BTC to <BitCoin Address>.
I would imagine that if somebody were to be poking around into the more dodgy places on the internet then it could provide powerful leverage to force a payout. Shame will drive a person into paying, rather than being found out, but then once the individual has paid once they are on the hook forever. Obviously, if you are an individual who does not have dark browsing habits, there is no leverage and it can easily be ignored. One thing that might change this dynamic is the increasing sophistication of AI. On the one hand the guilty can claim it is AI, but on the other an innocent person could be trapped through the generation of fake AI.
So as you can see this is not the kind of adoption we want to see, but none the less adoption is the bottom line, and I believe, and especially given El Salvador's failure in their BitCoin experiment, that we are no closer today than we were when BitCoin, the King of the Coins, first appeared.
I just wanted to put that thought out there for you.
As always stay safe and well my friends.
