For all the growth of 2017, bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general comprise only a small portion of transactions in day-to-day life. Even high tech countries like Japan are still heavily cash based.
Other countries are more forward-thinking, however, and none more so than the Scandinavian countries,in particular Sweden. Sweden has led the drive for a cashless society, to the point where using cash is now the exception rather than the norm. Even churches now receive 85% of their donations electronically!
And in the UK, more than half of all retail transactions are now made by card, probably due to the convenience of contactless debit and credit cards for any purchases up to £30 (US$40).
So far fiat cash has simply been replaced by electronic banking still using the same fiat currency, the Swedish Krona. But this is the first step towards mass adoption of crypto. As well as contactless cards, now you can pay using your phone or even your smart watch using services such as Apple Pay and Android Pay!
If you've ever seen someone try to pay with their watch you'll know how much of a faff it is!
For those of us passionate about cryptocurrencies who want to see them in the mainstream, we have all the building blocks in place for this to happen. Once contactless payments become more widespread, the psychological shift to paying with crypto rather than with fiat becomes much smaller.
The key challenges for the community now are as follows:
- develop platforms for cheap, convenient conversion between fiat and crypto
- easy to use, secure software wallets.
Once crypto is easy enough for the average smartphone user to use, we can expect usage to soar. The deflationary nature of most cryptocurrencies combined with the low/zero/negative interest rate environment of most of the western world will encourage anyone with savings to convert them to crypto to avoid their erosion by inflation.
Mass adoption is closer than ever yet there are still several hurdles to be overcome first. I fully expect usability to improve over the coming years.