At this moment of writing, there is so much buzz and hype about crypto currency in my part of the world (I live in Singapore). More and more of my friends are talking about the bitcoin boom and everybody are talking about FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). There was one time where I am having my daily kopi (Kopi is coffee in Singaporean terms) in a coffeeshop nearby my house where i saw someone about 60 plus years old man holding his Xiaomi phone and opening BlockFolio App (Blockfolio is an app to keep track of digital currency values). Talk about being current and keeping up to date!
CyrptoCurrency is picking up in Asia and I believe blockchain and applications building around blockchain technology will have a very important role towards Internet 2.0. Blockchain is not just for the fintech. It should be adopted for the masses.
Here is my take on blockchain and digital currency. Please do not stone me if you do not agree in some of my takes. I am still learning. :D
Why Blockchain and digital currency make sense?
1) It makes transaction online so much easier
Transaction online has never been easier. All i need is just the address of the receiver and within seconds, the transaction went through.
2) It makes transaction online so much cheaper
Getting rid of the middleman makes transaction online so much cheaper. There is still transaction fee when you pay using cryptocurrency but it is consider minimal compared to what you need to pay to like Paypal, worldpay or western union just to remit money over to your loved ones.
3)Digital currency cannot be counterfeit
You cannot counterfeit digital currency. Technically you can hack and steal bitcoin though but you cannot add 1 million bitcoin to your own wallet and claiming that its yours.
4) 700 different coins and applications right now and counting. Innovation at its best.
Behind every coin is an innovative application which intend to solve an issue that we had right now (Take away all the scam coins). Even though some application's idea are about the same, there are still slight difference in how they set it up and how they market it. Many great community including Steemit are birthed because many believe in the project!
What does not make sense and what can be improved on for wider adoption?
1) Buying bitcoin and alt coins is cumbersome and a hassle.
Currently I feel that buying digital currency is not easy and I have to go through many different exchanges. Right now, in order for me (In Singapore) to buy alt coins, I need to first use fiat to buy bitcoin in one of Singapore local exchange. Then I need to transfer these bitcoins to an US Exchange to buy altcoins. I hold different US Exchange login (Bittrex and Poloniex) because some coins cannot be found on one exchange and can only be bought at another exchange.
2) A secure way to recover lost/stolen password
At this moment, if you lost your password or the 12 words recovery phrase. Thats it! Say bye bye to your digital currency! It is a double edged sword though as private key are meant to be private and you should not be able to brute force into the password. So you need to backup your wallet data file, your password, your 12 words recovery phrase, your Google Authenticator (2FA)..
3) So many wallets
Wallets itself are easy to use and navigate around. But when you have a lot of different crypto currency, it becomes hard to manage. You can have numerous cold, hot, paper, hardware wallets for your various crypto currency and many wallets equal to many passwords, passphrase, private keys…etc. Sometimes in order to setup a wallet, you have to download the whole blockchain and you can have errors doing that.. What a pain..
4) Remembering sending address
Sending and receiving cryptocurrency is easy but remembering the address is not. Ethereum now has Name Service so that I do not need to type the gibberish addresses. How about the rest like bitcoin?
5) Too many coins in the market. Need a “Unified” one
700 over coins and counting. For wider adoption and common use, there need to be a point where all the applications can be built on top of a single digital currency (Ambitious vision it might be but if there are so many coins around, it is hard for wider adoption).
6) Trustless Transaction
Nearly all ransomware hackers demanded bitcoins as ransom. Why? It is because their identity is concealed. Technically it is still traceable in blockchain (bitcoin is pseudo-anonymous) especially when the hacker decided to cash out their bitcoin but it is going to take a huge effort and resources to trace one.
Please leave a comment on how can digital currency be of wider adoption!
Thanks for reading!
Be Blessed!