India: Lack Of Awareness Around Cryptocurrencies
My participation at the Mint-EY Digital Innovation Summit that happened yesterday gave me some deep insights into how many people at the event were lacking knowledge about cryptocurrencies.
I'll try to keep my observations brief on this subject.
Cryptocurrencies are illegal. I had two senior level execs from the IT industry say this. It's infact an ignorant comment because the fact is cryptocurrencies are not illegal nor legal. It is not legal tender but there is no issue in trading or possession.
Lack of initiative taking ability to experiment with cryptocurrencies. It takes a tiny sum of money, INR 500 to INR 1000 to purchase your first cryptocurrencies though one of the various peer-to-peer exchanges in India. KYC takes few mins to a day for most exchanges however exchanges are there where you can trade without kyc. Some of them haven't even tried this approach to see how it feels to hold some digital currency.
Lacking imagination. Paper based FIAT currency is better even if it's backed by thin air and imposed by the government. The willingness to question why FIAT currency might not be real money and why cryptocurrencies may have an edge as they are opt-in only. No one is forcing you to accept they are currency or money or store of value.
Pro-blockchain, pro-decentralisation, pro-transparency, pro-public ledger, pro-trustless transactions, pro-solutions driven by blockchain tech but anti-crypto. Do you see a problem here? How can we trust a permissioned blockchain or a centralised blockchain in the public sector. Tokenisation or not if it's not decentralised and open to anonymous audit we cannot really minimise the trust required from any single actor on the network.
Skepticism is healthy but ignorance is dangerous. There are many skeptics of the of the technology but that remains mostly due to lack of awareness. India needs a great shift in it's approach to cryptocurrencies. There is a dire need for a learning based journey and educating the masses, starting with the Indian IT sector on the inner workings on these emerging technologies.
Nearly all of the people I interacted with at the event are capable of doing all the different types of transactions required in the world of cryptocurrencies. But the lack of a desire to attempt to try and learn is what separates them from those who are liberal in their approach to this space and willing to see things for what they truly are and not what is projected to them by the media or the government.
That's all for now. I am considering doing some followup pieces around this at a later date.
If you like my work kindly resteem it to your friends. You may also continue reading my recent posts which might interest you:
- Why You Should Vote For Firepower As Witness—Witness Campaign Post From India!
- Steem.Chat Contest #69
- Emerging Deep Technologies, Mint-EY Digital Innovation Summit, 2019
Yes,it is very true. In my opinion, Still now 90% of people of our country have no idea about crypto or they don't have ever heard the name of cryptocurrencies.You are attending such an auspicious event and you receive such results, so what to expect from this conditions.
That's very true. We have a long way to go.
Forget general public, I was talking to a CEO of an exchange in Malta. He was an ex banker with a major investment bank and he said that even in the banking circles most people were mostly ignorant of the crypto world.
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Very true. Infact many are clueless about it.
There is indeed a lack of knowledge of crytocurrency, but I don't expect people to know about it either. At its core, India is still far from being a developed country. But the progress we are making is not a slow one either.
Almost every job position that I have interviewed for, required me to have at least a basic knowledge of what crypto is and how it works. There are new IT businesses rising all the time.
We are far, I admit, but we're getting there. The reason we're not "there yet" is because we still have bigger problems to deal that we haven't solved yet like poverty, income inequality, corruption and cultural division.
You can't really expect people of a country to know about something as new as crypto when there are literally millions of people out there who still don't have a roof over their heads and food to eat.
It'll take time, but if we can educate the youth and lead them a right direction, the potential we can gather is pretty massive.
I agree, there is a HUGE division between people who know and understand, and those who resist and seek solace in ignorance. Interestingly, this rift cuts right through levels of advanced education. What I don't see, though, is how this is related to poverty and inequality in income. Look at the US: they don't even want to resolve their economic, cultural, racial, religious, etc. divisions, ye in the right pockets of society (such as the IT sector) all this doesn't seem to factor in. Or look at China: supposedly all communist, but with gigantic differences in income, and they aren't trying to resolve any of it either. Still, the technological advances seem to be unaffected by this. The people who are might as well be living on a different planet.
True that!
I keep saying so many things to my fellow developers. I also see same observations from my friends as well. Especially when I say to my developer friends to spend some time to understand Blockchain technology and it's capabilities, I immediately get a reaction saying that "Bitcoin only know. It's is an illegal thing and I don't want you waste my time on that".
They act so ignorant and don't even listen. I used to think, when the whole world were pushed towards cloud computing they started learning it and so there will soon be a necessity in future and let these idiots learn by then.
After all not everyone can be early adoptors right. 😄😁😊😉
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Ignorance is bliss and there's no dearth of such people in this space currently.
Most large companies are going to hate decentraliztion. When they have lots of money they can influence those in charge to get the outcomes they desire.
I was listening to a presentation and the presenter said a blockchain company told her if there is a way to do something without using blockchain do it because blockchain only makes things more expensive and complicated. I think ease of use is still the biggest hurdle for cryptocurrencies still.
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Very well said. Blockchains can make things more expensive in the short term but their use in the public sector might yield some good results in the long run.
Cryptocurrency is revolutionary and people usually have hard time believing in such things. They were even reluctant to switch to the paper currency from the precious metals.
That's true.
Yes you are right
I have asked one of my friend that if the same amount of paper and ink and the foil used in ₹500, currency note and ₹2,000 currency note why the value is so much different? He just replied that its because the value is written on the paper. Than I asked then why the purchase power of the same currency is different from other countries same denomination note?
He hadn't clue.
I said the same thing is with crypto currencies you can count them as diffetent countries currency but still have purchase power same as the fiat one.
Ordinary people dont know about it and afraid of it and wanna be in the same traditional way.
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Yeah. This is commonplace currently.
I am still laughing remembering one f my friend told me "Yaar Aku my dad said me this bitcoin will value 0 soon." She even don't know what is Bitcoin..
Most people are in that position currently.
They will come out, not soon but sure way.
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