Yes, I'm new to the crypto phenomena. And as I have gone along, invested some here, some there and got to familiarise myself to it, there are a few things that needs some critical thinking. Because even though you find excellent projects that will change the world, enhance lives, the whole scene is littered with hurdles before the consumer adopts it.

Security!

No, Im not talking security in the terms of cryptography. I'm talking in terms of the solidity of any given project. Most of the altcoins we see today will never make it to five years. They will be bankrupt and out of funds with NO development and not a snowballs chance in hell to be of any value. Here in Norway there is a fund that guarantees your money up to a level of two million NOK (approx. EUR 200 000). In case of bankruptcy your funds are recoverable, though it will take a while. You don't get such guarantees in crypto. Not that I've seen yet, anyway.

Ease of use!

For those who a tech savvy it is no problem to juggle a number of transactions every day and there is not much to it. For the consumer on the other hand, to step into the massive hurdles of private keys, addresses that are COMPLETELY impossible to understand, a VISA card and good old fiat in the bank is a walk in the park compared! The first time I purchased steem I had to nag the customer support in order to get the funds. And once I got them, it was no way to send them to my steemit account directly. I have since found out how to do it via Hive account@openledger, Hive account@blocktrades and Hive account@poloniex. But come on! There should not be a middle man. It is hard enough to copy-paste these magical strings of text and numbers to the corresponding field on the sending end. There is only two projects that I know of that has a solution with at least human readable addresses. It is bitshares and steemit. There are also wallets that at least offer to save frequently used addresses. A step in the right direction. Though I would much prefere to send money to Anne-Marit, who happens to be my mother. She might be capable of opening a wallet with bitshares. But she would freak out when she discovers the complexity and lack of a norwegian translation. Again, ease of use.

It's expensive!

There is no way to avoid transaction costs in order to have a functioning network. But these must go down in order to deliver the promise of being cheaper than fiat. The network pricing varies enormously and I think some currencies are overpricing their network fees. I know Etherium isn't meant to function as a currency, but wow. The price for sending a few bytes is astronomical.

We never got rid of the middle man!

There is no freedom in crypto! We rely heavily on middle men everywhere! I think the most grotesque example is when I opened my eyes to NEM. Wow, cool project! I wonder what it takes to get 10 000 XEM and start harvesting. So I checked out Changelly to satisfy my curiosity. Just to discover their overhead was so large, it would take me ages to recover. So I thought screw it and use my creativity instead. I still think Nem is an enticing project. But the fees to the money changers is way to high. The same goes for the other exchanges. Though I think they deliver compared to normal exchanges. I've been fooling around with stocks for the past 10 years where the fees are sky high. Again I would like to mention bitshares. That leaves your decissions to be handled by the network. Yes, there are fees involved. But compared with fiat and normal exchanges, it is not much. There are also other currencies adapting a all-in-one solution to storing and exchanging coins. But I would like to highlight the DEX as a brilliant example of a good compliment to the standardised QT wallet.

Simplicity, usability and availability!

It simply isn't there yet! Sorry! It is far to complex for the average joe to get excited about crypto. I think Hive account@exodus wallet is doing great things to siplify. Though it certainly lacks features. I love to use it, but it is clear as day that one critical component is missing: The mobile companion. There are solutions for that as well. Jaxx has a multicurrency wallet with a mobile companion. I haven't got around to test it yet. But it seems pretty straight forward.

I didn't intend to make this a propaganda piece for bitshares. But some of the things they do is right. I miss the true light client from them and I miss mobile solutions. There sure is other projects out there addressing my complaints. I just haven't found them yet. Ark might qualify, but still in development. Viva is also maybe worth mentioning. But for steemians to have a "big brother" in bitshares and the DEX adds value to my crypto life. But there is a lot of room for improvement.