Why Buying Coffee With Bitcoin Won’t Get Cryptocurrency Mass Adoption
Coffee. It’s a beverage of mythical reputation in parts of the cryptocurrency community. It has the power, when purchased with cryptocurrency, suddenly renders that currency a commonly-accepted medium of exchange for all purposes, leading to the collapse of the central banking system and possibly the state itself.
Or not. I buy my coffee with Dash. Quite a few have bought theirs with another form of cryptocurrency. Yet, this has not significantly moved the needle forward towards adopting it as a new payment system. It’s a great step, but new people just aren’t lining up to get cryptocurrency so they can spend it on their favorite caffeinated beverage. Something’s clearly missing in how mass adoption is being approached.
Cryptocurrency adoption has taken a backwards approach
Strangely enough, most cryptocurrency adoption efforts have gone in the opposite direction of the proper model. Many adoption advocates have focused on retail adoption, in getting mom-and-pop mainstream shops to accept it, as well as larger retailers. This was probably targeted for symbolic or sentimental value, where being able to buy the proverbial crypto coffee signifies that this has become a regular part of economic life, but has always struggled with the same problem: not enough user demand. No one is lining up to spend it in everyday life except for the few hardcore fans, giving businesses little incentive to continue to accept it, and no reason to expect numbers of customers paying with this method to increase.
Now, using cryptocurrencies such as payments, and particularly Dash, does improve the payment experience from higher security to lower fees, and eventually the superior money and payment system will prove more attractive than legacy options. However, in the interim the difference between the two experiences is simply not great enough to provide a compelling reason to switch, and in many cases can provide disincentives due to the additional effort and costs associated with acquiring and offloading cryptocurrency.
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Source: dashnews.org
Published at Mon, 07 Oct 2019 03:07:19 +0000
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