We all hear people constantly talk back and forth about what it will take for crypto to be adopted to the mainstream. People are constantly bickering over the implementations that are needed in order to make crypto easy enough to use and accessible enough to the masses.
When I first got started in crypto (about 1.5 years ago), it was much different than it was today. The U.S. had a really tough time trying to even buy Bitcoin.
I remember having significant troubles with it at first. I have a decent bit of technical knowledge in general, but by no means am I a tech "genius" like many of those we see in crypto and blockchain.
When I see some of my fellow Steemians and others talk about crypto and blockchain-tech, I can't help but be amazed at their amazing capacity for knowledge about this emerging landscape.
But it also helps highlight the insane learning curve that comes along with any new emerging technology. Crypto/blockchain is even more so because it's completely different than anything that came before it.
But I digress... The reason why I'm bringing this up today is because I was making some transfers between my hard wallets and exchange accounts as I buy into these low prices while crypto has seen a small downtrend (about 3-5% over the past 2 days).
It's crazy to me that people are selling crypto at these prices... It's actually really crazy. But I'll have to talk about that in a separate post.
The issue that I had today was that it took me nearly 4 hours to make all my transfers. I had to find the location of specific tokens in my different hard wallets and exchange accounts, then I had to transfer between hard wallets (which required me to use 2 different computers with multiple USB outputs).
Then I had to get into my exchange accounts which can be a hassle all on it's own (especially since my phone got switched 1 week ago and I lost half of my 2FA's!!!!)
Anyways, I spent all this time and I finally got my transfers through.
As many of you probably know, I have been trading on the stock market for several years and have a lot of experience with stocks and options and bonds.
Let me tell you now, it would not have taken 4 hours for me to manually transfer stocks between accounts and I would not have had the hassle that comes with crypto either.
But we have to remind ourselves that crypto is new and there are many benefits to crypto that don't apply to fiat stocks...
For one point, Stocks can take several days to transfer between accounts (due to regulations and financial institutions)... While you can set that in motion with a click of a button and a copy/paste of some account numbers, you can't see the transfer happen in real time using TX trackers in the same way that you can monitor transfers of cryptocurrency.
The issue here is usability for the average person. Most people have neither the patience nor the technical know-how to spend 4 hours transferring some money between accounts and that's something that definitely needs radical improvement.
The good news is that today it takes 1/4th the time that it took 1.5 years ago when I first got into crypto. We are on the right path and I'm 100% sure that we will continue to evolve this crypto market and make it easier and easier to move money around!!!
One thing that I'm excited about in the future is a fiat-STEEM gateway for the USA!!! That would make my life 100x easier and better!!!
What are you most excited about for crypto?