The ‘World Wide Web’ has been with us for decades. When people talk of ‘Surfing the Web’, no one thinks of spiders, or surfboards. however, this is effectively what people are doing with ‘Cryptocurrency’.
The problem, is that the name ‘Cryptocurrency’ has become the umbrella term for any crowd sourced company that uses the blockchain to distribute its shares.
As the amusing image above shows.. the wrong name can make people assume a lot about a product or buisness.
Blockchain is a simple concept, but a totally new one. Its takes a bit of time to understand its implications, and terminology. Most people haven’t yet felt the need to integrate it into their lives. For this reason it remains a mystery to the larger population. Anyone hearing the term ‘Cryptocurrency’ for the first time will hear “Cryptography”.. and ‘Currency”. And its sounds a little sketchy.
This implies that people are buying a ‘curency’ created through some inventive number magic.
The term ‘CryptoStocks’ would be clearer.
However even the term cryptocurrency is also confusing for the likes of bitcoin, litecoin, dash or any other cryptographiclly stored value.
The term implies that that the value is being created out of thin air, on a whim. This may actually be true for goverment currencies, but thats a topic for a different day.
When people buy bitcoin, they ‘Exchange’ traditional money for bitcoin. This in turn can be exchanged back for traditional money.
This is more like a bank account. An account that is secured using uncrackabe cryptopgrphy.
If people thought of their bitcoin as a ‘Crypto Account’, it would imply a level of security. Your bitcoins may change in value compared to the dollar, but they would always be worth the same amount of bitcoin.
The point i’m making is that this umberlla term of ‘Cryptocurrency’ is adding a linguistic level of confusion to a dificult to understand technology.
‘CryptoStocks’, and ‘CryptoAccount’ would offer a clearer explanation.
As time goes on ‘Blockchain’ will become incorporated into everyday life. But until then there is a learning curve. People will continue to judge it by its name, and its adoption will take a little longer.
I’d be interested in other peoples opinion.