As with plenty of people making noise online these days, I've been part of the ecosystem for a long time now. When I first learnt about Bitcoin, I too believed that I was being presented with a golden opportunity. All of a sudden, not only had I found a way to become ungovernable, but I had also found my way out of the rat race. A way to escape being a little cog in a machine.

These days I see things slightly differently, and maybe slightly is not the correct word here. There's an ugly truth most of us crypto enthusiasts don't like to discuss: most coins are not suitable to be used as money. They are either too difficult to use, too expensive, or too volatile. And where does that leave us, the early adopters?

Along come stablecoins. The knights in shining armor who attempt to close this gap. They promise, as their name suggests, the stability necessary for commerce and a way for people in this space to secure some of their investment — a hedge. At first glance, this sounds absolutely fantastic. No need for people to do quick calculations of satoshis against the dollar or probe the network for gas prices. Transactions can become as simple as everyday purchases. But not all is peaches and cream either.

You see, the problem with stablecoins is that most of them — not all, obviously — suffer from a fragility point. Tether, for example, has always and probably will always be controversial, although it sits on a throne. We seem to be observing an ungodly marriage that will surely end in a tumultuous divorce. The information on this is widely known, but for now, it might be enough to point out that a proper audit has never been done. And as they say in the movies, “the prosecution rests.”

So the question becomes: how do we fix this? How can we bring cryptocurrencies to the masses? I believe the answer is not entirely obvious, but we definitely know what is not working. Everyone in this space knows by now that El Salvador, a tiny Central American country, decided to take the bull by the horns. The government used its resources not only to develop an official wallet for the people, but to also distribute satoshis as a right of citizenship. President Bukele was applauded for these actions, rightfully so, but that chess move did little to make a Bitcoiner out of the common folk.

From where I stand — and of course, with a certain amount of bias inspiring my keystrokes — I see only a few ecosystems that have the right ingredients to thrive and to become real money. Whatever becomes our currency, whether it is a token currently sitting somewhere on CoinMarketCap or one that is yet to be born, it has to have certain characteristics.

• Transactions have to be fast and cheap, if not free

• It has to be inflationary, to promote commerce

• People have to be able to earn it, with little to no technical knowledge

And this is where I am mentally. What sort of cryptocurrency ecosystems exist today that have these — let’s call them — advantages? We could be dropping tokens on people all day. Airdrops are popular, of course, but this is simply giving fish to the hungry and not showing them a way to fish themselves.

I’ll leave this first blog entry of mine there, but I’m curious to hear what people think on this matter.

How do we solve this puzzle?