There's all this hoopla and big noise about cryptos and bitcoin and blockchains and all kinds of buzzwords that come associated within this sphere, but the fact of the matter is this technology is not ready to go mainstream. Theres still alot of hurdles to overcome in order for the everyday person to actually use, and not just use it as a speculation or make a quick buck trading these coins. This is my attempt at conveying my experience being in cryptos for close to a year now and some of the growing pains that come with this new and exciting tech.
For starters:
The big kid on the block is going through some growing pains and doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up. Is it going to be a store of value? only to be used with large transactions, like buying a house or a car. Or will it somehow find a way to scale and actually be used like digital cash and smaller every day transctions? Will it be an mainchain solution or will it find relief in sidechains or some other technique not yet discovered? The only truth is bitcoin being the biggest and baddest chain, is no match for cash transactions or even remotely close to replacing VISA, Pay-pal or any form of digital transaction. For now it still remains an experiment and will continue being for the foreseeable future due to the scaling debate. I think its perfectly normal to see this technology get stretched and pulled every which way, test its resilience, and see where it falls short. However, bitcoin better not hope another alt-coin will sneak up on it and steal its lunch and send it home crying.
Hardware or paper wallets are your safest way to store these speculative vehicles. I just finally made my way to buying a Ledger Nano S, and omg! I kinda fee like i wasted $80. I've never used a pager, but i feel like this is what it felt like using one. There's only 2 buttons and you have to use those 2 buttons to navigate through the menu system. You cant manage your coins onscreen[which at this point only include bitcoin, ethereum, ripple, and maybe a handful of other alts], you still need to have this connected to a computer if you want to check your balances. I have some paper wallets for my DASH coins, and feel paper wallets are the best alternative to securely storing your coins, make multiple copies of your paper wallets, store them safely, and you're good to go. At this point, ive not even figured out how to configure my Ledger Nano S to store my DASH or Litecoins. This should have been ready out of the box to be used with some of the other alt-coins, so i wouldn't have to be fuddling around looking for extensions to add-on.
3)Most, if not all of the software wallets, still pretty much resemble a computer program-that's so 2000. Jaxx is one of the few ive used that actually feels like an app, and is relatively easy to use and setup. Although its been recently having some security issues-depends on who you ask though- and many of the techies in the sphere shun it because of questionable flaws. It does seem like Jaxx is the only software wallet that is making any effort into improving the software user interface. Its also one of the few wallets where you can easily manage multiple coins, and soon they will be adding many more other alt-coins. So software wallets are also limited, and still as the saying goes "if you don't hold it, you don't own it". This referring to the private key that Jaxx holds and thus, makes it the owner of your coins. From my limted knowledge, the only other alt-coin trying to make strides in the UI of wallets and general ease of cryptos is DASH. They have been in the works(possibly several months to a year) with a major software release called Evolution. This software basically wants to integrate into major retailers to accept DASH so the users will have options to actually spend their DASH. Along the way the software wanst to minimize the learning curve required when one jumps into cryptos. They want to eliminate the long arbitrary string of words with actual names of people or clients you want to be sending or receiving payments from. Basically, the software aims at making the use of cryptos not so cumbersome, will it work, well see once the software releases later this year.
So yeah, these are just some of the hurdles ive notice while using cryptos, its not a complete or extensive list, just what sticks out immediately. Like i mention, its definitely an ongoing experiment, but is exciting nonetheless, specially if your one of the lucky early adopter who now has seen they cryptosphere go from a few billion market to over $100 billion cap.