Tag: user experience

Bitcoin Will NEVER Gain Mass Adoption – Cryptonomics

Bitcoin will never reach mass adoption – that’s my case here. It’s not because there’s anything wrong with Bitcoin of itself. It’s simply because Bitcoin isn’t aiming for mass adoption.

The Bitcoin team isn’t focused on mass adoption, and maybe they never were. They’re focused on something else – I don’t know exactly what, something technical, some kind of engineering miracle. I know they’re not focused on mass adoption, because mass adoption comes with user experience. The way you get people to use your tech is to make it easy to use. You start with your customer in mind.

Scroll down to watch and listen to this episode.

Stay Safe

Welcome to Cryptonomics, principles of cryptocurrency and investing. If you are storing hundreds or thousands of dollars of crypto on exchanges, you’re putting yourself at risk. Your account could get hacked, the exchange could get hacked. That’s why I recommend getting a Trezor. In many ways, it’s even more secure than storing your crypto on a paper wallet buried in your backyard. I’ve been using mine for more than a year and had a great experience with it. You can store more than 500 different cryptos on here. Put your mind at ease, keep your crypto safe with Trezor.

UX is not a priority for Bitcoin

We know that user experience isn’t their priority, because we can hear it from the developers themselves. In 2017 when Bitcoin transaction fees were surging, Bitcoin dev Lukejr said “Just pay a $5 fee and it’ll go through every time unless you’re doing something stupid.”

In 2013, developer Gregory Maxwell gave his opinion on the 1 MB block limit which caused the transaction fees to get to that point, saying he wouldn’t have joined the project if they didn’t have that limit. More recently in October 2018, both Maxwell and developer Jimmy Song advised people to use their credit cards rather than use Bitcoin for a purchase.

We can tell these are people who aren’t striving for a good UX, saying these things without apologies. Whatever plans they have for Bitcoin, it’s not as a payment platform for regular people. Bitcoin has an established history, it’s the oldest project of its kind, and it is tough. I would still say it’s the most stable project in crypto, but I’d also say that stable and stagnant are two sides of the same coin.

I like to think about the case of BetaMax vs VHS, the video systems from the 80s and 90s.

BetaMax vs VHS

Ask some people why BetaMax failed and they’ll tell you it was market failure. BetaMax had the superior tech, and buyers just made a bad choice and made VHS popular. BetaMax did have superior picture quality, but users made the right choice. Users bought the product which best served their needs.
BetaMax was so focused on tech that they never bothered to ask what their customers wanted. What they wanted, on the whole, was an affordable system with a long play time. Picture quality was always secondary. BetaMax could only record an hour in its first form. VHS could do two hours, enough for a movie or football game. BetaMax also waited years to add new features like the remote control. And so, people bought the system which gave them what they wanted.

The whole product

This is an extract from an article about BetaMax vs VHS:

… almost no journalists, and no geeks, have ever come across the concept of “the whole product”, though it is well known to marketing people. Real people may not be aware of it, but the “whole product” model is an accurate description of the way they buy things.

Let’s take a simple example: digital audio tape (Dat). Get someone to compare Dat with a humble C90 compact cassette and they will find Dat to be technologically superior, especially for recording music. However, if you consider “the whole product”, Dat is vastly inferior for most people most of the time. This is why people still buy millions of cassettes, while Dat has virtually disappeared from consumer use.

The point is that when someone buys and uses a product, the technological aspects are a small and often uninteresting part of the decision. When you choose compact cassette, you are also buying into a vast infrastructure of capabilities, services and support. These include the availability of cheap cassettes on every high street, cheap personal stereos, and the ability to use the same format for a wide range of applications (personal stereo, portable radio/cassette players, in the car, in your hi-fi stack).

That was Jack Schofield writing for the Guardian in 2003. We don’t use cassette tapes any more, but fundamentally nothing has changed. Techies still don’t know that there is more to a product than just its specs.

Go verify your own blockchain

A month ago, I interviewed Juan Galt about why he still believes Bitcoin is the most important project in crypto. Juan told me that:

“It comes from an an American culture, so there’s an analogy to the right to bear arms in the Bitcoin world, and that’s the right to be able to validate the blockchain itself … If you can’t download a node to a consumer grade computer and run the verification process, you can’t actually know the supply is limited.”

I respectfully disagree with Juan. if you’re nerdy enough to want to download an entire blockchain and prove for yourself that the amount of coins is limited, you’re probably nerdy enough to buy specialised hardware to do it. Working the whole project to cater to this small group of people who want to be able to prove the basis of their money on their home computer, is backwards. Regular people don’t care about that.

I encourage people to go back and listen to the full interview with Juan so you can hear his arguments and make up your own mind.

Everybody wants a good user experience

Regular people want something easy to use, and to get them to change their habits, it might even have to be easier to use than what they have now. Services like Google Pay, PayPal and Venmo set the standard of modern financial services. Being able to verify the blockchain on your iPhone generally is not something that people have on their mental checklist.

This tech can already be used to send payments cheaply, evading capital controls, and giving an option to people stuck with a hyperinflating currency. There are people suffering out there who could really benefit from digital currency, but they still can’t get it because there aren’t services that let them access it. Fortunately, some people are working on things like Dash Text, which lets people with feature phones send Dash.

I don’t know which project will hit the mainstream first. What I know is, if your project focuses on tech and not people, it will stay in your mum’s garage. First and foremost, all tech, all design, all crypto, should be about people. When you care about people, people will care about you.

Important Links

Buy a Trezor and keep your crypto safe
Steve Jobs on UX
Why VHS was better than BetaMax
Just pay a $5 fee
Greg Maxwell 1 MB limit
Credit cards are better
Juan Galt – Practical Bitcoin Maximalist
Cryptonomics – Bitcoin will NEVER reach mass adoption

 

You can listen and subscribe on Anchor and other podcasting services here:

Cryptonomics – Bitcoin will NEVER reach mass adoption

Bitcoin vs Dash – Bitcoin mental blocks: SegWit & UX

A lot of people left comments on my videos saying “If SegWit comes in…” “Just you wait and see if Segregated Witness comes in…” What they don’t get is, that’s a huge “if”. The problem isn’t just that there are unconfirmed transactions now… the problem is, we have no idea how or when the solutions will be implemented. That is the real problem, and Bitcoin maximalists have a huge blind spot for that. It seems to be because they’re only thinking about Bitcoin in terms of the technology, not in terms of the human factors – the governance, the politics. It’s as if they say “Well the technology exists so it’s all going to be fine.” And when you ask “How is that tech going to be implemented?” they say “the technology exists so it’s all going to be fine.”

You also see this flavour of thinking when it comes to user experience. They say “I don’t care about having to copy and paste a Bitcoin address” Or they bring up QR codes. It’s true, QR codes give an improved user experience compared to long confusing strings of characters that make up Bitcoin addresses. However, QR codes pose their own problems. I’ve often been on the web looking at a QR code thinking, what am I supposed to do – point my phone at my monitor? That just seems weird. If people had to scan a QR code to get to Google or Facebook, the web probably wouldn’t be as popular as it is today.

If you want a service to get popular, you have to extend your empathy, imagine yourself in the shoes of a complete noob and try to feel what they would in that situation. If you get caught up thinking “I’m comfortable with this (so I’m sure everyone else will be too),” you’re confining your tech to be used by an elite few.

 

Dash digital cash vs Bitcoin: Which will achieve mass adoption first? – Episode 154

The Story: Bitcoin & Dash – User experience and governance in cryptocurrency

Bitcoin is an amazing technology that captured the imaginations of many people. Various individuals were stunned at the idea that mathematical algorithms could form the basis of our money, rather than central bankers and corrupt politicians, as is normally the way today. People were seduced by the idea of sending value around the world in a matter of minutes, a currency uncontrolled and uncontrollable by authority, and sending micropayments to websites to read their articles – instead of having to tolerate clickbait content beholden to advertisers. Bitcoin has delivered on some of those promises, however, it’s 8 years on and it still seems to be far from mainstream adoption.

If we take a step back from the hype and the dream of Bitcoin – still alive in the minds of many of us – we can see that Bitcoin has a few key problems. The main problem is, it’s too hard to use. People have to use long addresses which look like computer errors, to know the right transaction fee to send their cash or risk their transaction being at the back of a queue of 80,000, they have to generate new addresses for security, make paper wallets or buy a Trezor if they really want to be secure – and if they lose their wallet, or get hacked, they might just lose their life’s savings. Does that sound like a currency which is ready for mass adoption?

Now, I don’t know any digital currency which is ready for mass adoption – but I do know one which might be close. Dash “Digital Cash” is a currency which started in 2014, and the team is actively working on the problem of user experience, devising a system where people can log-in from any computer with a username and password, send currency using something like looks like a name, have their money secured while still retaining control, and not worry about losing their retirement fund just because they misplaced their private keys. Even now, Dash has the functionality of instant payments, and of private payments.

In this short episode, Kurt presents the case of why Dash might reach mass adoption before Bitcoin. Join me in another paradigm-shattering, central-banker-unseating, digital revolution episode of … The Paradise Paradox!

The Links:

Bitcoin vs Dash – which is the currency of the future?

Why aren’t we seeing greater adoption of cryptocurrency?

Bitcoin’s bubble vs Dash’s killer app

Dash.org

The Cash:

If you enjoy our posts, please have a look at The Paradise Paradox’s page on Steemit where you can join, earn money, and upvote our posts to help support the show! You can also find a lot of additional content which is not posted on this site, with Kurt’s posts on Steemit and Aaron’s posts on Steemit.

We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link. Or buy some of our great T-shirts here.

The Episode:

To download the audio, right click and press “save as”.

Remember to subscribe on iTunes or subscribe on Pocket Casts.

If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.

Episode 78 – Humberto Quintanilla: Pulsebtc

The Episode:


To download the audio, right click and press “save as”.

Remember to subscribe on iTunes or subscribe on Pocket Casts.

If you enjoyed the episode, don’t keep it a secret! Feel free to share it on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Reddit, or your office bathroom wall.

The Cash:

We really appreciate all of your contributions! Every cent and satoshi we receive lets us know that we’re doing something worthwhile, that you are entertained by our program, and that you’re starting to question what you know more and more. Please be generous. Donate to The Paradise Paradox. Or buy some stuff on Amazon using this link. Or buy some of our great T-shirts here.

The Story:

Ask almost any Bitcoin enthusiast for the main obstacles holding back Bitcoin from mainstream adoption, and usability will most likely fall in the top two. Many companies are working on solutions to this problem, such as ChangeTip, allowing people to send money to people through tweets or YouTube comments. Another is Netki, which changes Bitcoin addresses into warm and friendly, human readable addresses. And yet another is Pulsebtc, which enables regular people to enjoy some of the benefits of Bitcoin transactions, without ever having to know that they’re using blockchain technology.

The product comes in the form of a bracelet, which one day you will be able to swipe in taxis and cafés to pay for your product. Because of Bitcoin’s low transaction fees, It’s cheaper for the vendor, and it’s convenient for the user.

At LaBITconf, we met the CEO of Pulsebtc, Humberto Quintanilla, and discussed his vision, his journey as an entrepreneur, his ideas of what the future might look like, and his romantic outlook on life. Join us for another Bitcoin-transferring, coffee-and-donut-paying, technologically-innovating episode of … The Paradise Paradox!

The Eps:

Episode 73 – Anarchist Adventurer Kenny Palurintano

The Links:

Pulsebtc introduction video (in Spanish)

Pulsebtc on Facebook

Emprende2minutos (under maintenance at time of posting)