The last few months around LeoFinance, Hive and the greater Cryptosphere have been exciting, haven’t they?
The community has quite literally been a HIVE of activity with exciting changes and updates in the works on LeoFinance; our native Hive token very suddenly making a new all time high — very briefly — of US $1.40+, and not Bitcoin taking a run towards a new all-time high.
Curator Cat... contemplating again...
Last I looked, we were sitting at $64,253, just some hundreds short of breaking out.
Yup, exciting times, indeed!
I like to intuit ”subtexts” and look at ongoing patterns of what’s being said ”between the lines,” because that’s often where you can find the real information and trends that make a difference.
The thing that always makes me a bit sad is the pervasive subtext that when there’s a run-up in the price of our tokens, people are invariably looking for the particular price point at which they will sell their stake.
Now, I understand that approach perfectly well, purely from an investing standpoint. You have to take profits from time to time — if you feel so inclined and that’s part of your investment strategy.
Or maybe I really mean to say trading strategy, rather than investment strategy, because the two are not the same!
But that’s not exactly where my reservations and slight sadness come from.
My sadness comes from the fact that — much as we are all always singing the praises of cryptocurrency as “the future” while preaching the imminent demise of legacy financial and currency systems — all these people with ”sell points” are most likely cashing in so they can exit to FIAT!
Or if not exactly fiat, maybe a parking place like USDT or USDC. Think about that, for a moment...
Not all, do that, of course.
Broken Promises...?
Now, I’m not blaming anyone for doing what they are doing because perhaps they need a new roof on their house, or want to take a vacation. Far from it! At the same time, I am somewhat blaming everyone for the fact that the original promise of cryptocurrencies as a viable alternative payment system to fiat is still failing!
We still can’t readily buy a cup of coffee with crypto, except by using a crypto-based debit card that changes the crypto into fiat.
And so, in all the excitement of new highs and new products, and new dApps, perhaps the single most exciting thing to happen in the past year happened when you could — albeit briefly — buy a Tesla with Bitcoin.
Actually, the buying part wasn't the most significant thing there; the true paradigm changer was the attached statement that aforesaid BTC received for sold Teslas WOULD BE HELD AS BTC, and not immediately turned into Fiat!
As we all know, Elon Musk subsequently backtracked and the whole thing went in the toilet... but just for a moment, something actually changed.
That’s perhaps a very small detail in a great ocean of information, yet I feel it represents an essential point of progress in the greater scheme of bringing cryptos to the world.
In some ways, it seems more significant than El Salvador declaring Bitcoin "legal tender" because Tesla is global, while el Salvador is still a nation state.
"Adoption" vs. "Awareness"
One of the things I often contemplate is the fact that we so often talk about mass adoption, but our actual actions suggest that we are really more concerned with mass awareness.
If you were to take a poll of 100 random "crypto-aware" persons, I think it would be a safe bet to say that far more are interested in cryptos "to invest and make money" than in being able to "buy a cup of coffee."
To me, "adoption" means people actually using cryptocurrencies as part of regular life. We're back to buying that cup of coffee, and the "broken promise" in the title of this post. We have certainly reached a point where there is a lot of awareness, but as long as all the focus remains on some variation of "using cryptos to make more fiat" (like stocks and bonds?) we aren't really adopting much of anything, are we?
OF COURSE I recognize that this will all be a long and gradual process, but something continues to be missing in the equation; a discussion I have often had with our resident "crypto evangelist," 
How do we break away from the idea of "making money in crypto" coming purely from increases in value, rather than from the actual business conducted entirely in crypto?
Seeking Everyday "Boring" Use Cases...
Where are the people who are developing functional use cases for crypto? The people who are building the crypto equivalent of an eBay, Amazon or Craigslist that would facilitate peer-to-peer commerce WITHOUT having to exit to fiat? Where's the crypto-based Fiverr? Where are the projects that make cryptos "relevant" as something other than some kind of exotic investment?
Seems to me we still have a long way to go... and it strikes me as being less about "being able to" develop these things than about a change in mindset away from "crypto-as-investment" towards "crypto-as-currency." Crypto-CURRENCY. Get it?
Of course, the "wall" we have to climb is fundamentally human: "Greed is good!" which has been driving the legacy money and financial systems for eons.
Which sadly leaves me wondering: Are we actually READY to grow up and take the next steps forward towards a new way of doing things, or will cryptos ultimately just become the same old thing with different window dressing?
What do YOU think?
=..=
CuratorCat 19-OCT-2021