The Hassle Involved With Investing In Crypto
Recently, @enforcer48 has published two excellent posts examining the way Steem has been promoted. Dissecting why many of the pitches involved have little to no appeal to the average person. You can view those posts here.
https://steemit.com/steem/@enforcer48/from-a-layman-s-view-part-i
https://steemit.com/steem/@enforcer48/from-a-layman-s-view-part-ii
The analysis is spot on, yet there is one thing in my opinion that is crucial yet not mentioned (yet, perhaps in the next installment it was coming).
Human nature being what it is, people are prone to taking the path of least resistance. That description is the opposite of what is necessary if one is interested in investing in crypto, especially if it involves one of the alts like Steem. In the U.S., it involves (1)KYC processes, buying in and keeping your fingers crossed your bank doesn't decide to make you the next example for dabbling in crytpo by closing your account. (2)Then, you have to understand how transferring initial investment (whether it is Bitcoin, Ethereum or Litecoin) to another exchange you must register with and duplicate your security protocols. (3)Then you can now trade for your Steem.
(4)From there, you now must meticulously pay attention yet again to your security protocols as you transfer your Steem from the exchange to your Steem wallet. Four steps which are fraught with anxiety for the average user ( I consider myself one of these users). One misstep and its all gone. Do everything right and things still might go wrong from your bank deciding to be dicks to the exchange deciding they won't give you your coin and there isn't shit you can do about it. Or, some hacker whose been lurking around you in the background laughs to themselves as they swoop in and steal your shit. Or maybe you have your two factor set, but lose your phone through damage or theft. Or get simjacked.
The point is, most have no desire to jump through all of these hoops. I reluctantly did, and really don't relish the idea of doing it more. Here is a video by a guy who travels who has observed that most Americans don't understand, but travelers do as they are used to using exchanges to obtain local currencies.
Just about a month ago, @theycallmedan published a post on marketing ideas. You can read/watch it here.
https://steemit.com/threespeak/@theycallmedan/cbhxgsfz#@practicalthought/q01rv7
I commented in that post that
If one of the whales was to face the regulations necessary to set up a fiat to Steem pathway, mitigating the risks due to ignorance and human error, it would set a new bar for blockchains. Seems to me that projects are tied to Bitcoin (and to a lesser extent Ethereum and Litecoin) as one has to purchase those first to then trade for the Steem.
Making entry (which was Dan Larimers vision) easier is a huge marketing step. Make it mass friendly and the masses will come.
Dan replied he was looking into ways to setup a fiat to Steem gateway. I hope that he is close to getting the logistics figured out that will appease the regulatory processes. It really seems simple to me that a large part of the lack of investment by masses comes from the difficulty involved in doing so. I wonder at times where the value (demand) for Steem would be if the process for buying it were as easy as purchasing items from Amazon or Ebay, etc? How much erosion would have occurred is debatable as masses typically move in herd like ways. Would we still be viewed as a .40 coin, or 1.00 coin? Not sure, but if it was as easy to buy as ordering a pizza I believe all those small (surely there would be large as well) purchases would ease the weight of supply significantly.
I was reading recently the the SPS funding has been stopped for the moment. Shame it couldn't go towards establishing a fiat to crytpo gateway as a number one priority. Steem has many unique features, and adding such a process to the chain would be yet another real victory for the chain. One that the average person could understand and have a use for.
Where did you read SPS funding has been stopped? There are two projects over the line at present getting funding to my understanding
Put in a proposal to establish a fiat gateway and i will vote for it :)
Oh, he probably meant the brief moment when the Korean community voted on the return proposal and locked out all funding.
I have read a few posts mentioning the return proposal had stopped funding, both from more knowledgeable users and those who were effected by the stopped funding. I read posts such as these
https://steemit.com/steemdao/@inertia/proposal-39-funding-on-pause#@gtg/q1evpu
https://steemit.com/steemworld/@steemworld.org/steemworld-support-2019-11-25
https://steemit.com/community/@glenalbrethsen/this-is-not-about-me
While it's true I am ignorant of much of the inner workings (SPS being one of them) something drastic must have happened to funding for these posts to come to my attention. Hope the two projects that regained funding are good ones :)
Thank you. Unfortunately, my ignorance and brokeness make me an unsuitable candidate for such an endeavor. It's my hope that one (or a group) of the more knowledgeable members of the community has the knowledge and resources necessary to set up such a system. After this many years, I think it is safe to assume that Steemit has no interest in being involved with the headaches involved with the use of fiat. Nor Blocktrades for that matter.
I'm hopeful that someone like theycallmedan (who is on record as already looking into it) will be able to set something up. This is huge enough I could see it being a great case for having the SPS funding used towards its implementation.
:) fyi here is a good short video on how funding works.
https://steemit.com/hive-100421/@themarkymark/dqjcgofn
Nah, it felt good writing the first two part and felt forced when I wanted to continue on with it.
But yes, the general complexities with crypto puts off a lot of people. Although, I do wonder if the prospect of money does compel some to jump through the hoops anyways.
For example, my friend is a SAP employee through acquisition of Qualtrics. The employees have a perk where they can get company stock "buy 1 get 40% free" (or so I'm told). He figured out ways to set up international banking, etc. to make sure he maximizes his purchases.
With US buyers locked out places like Binance and whatnot, it does annoy me that I can't get some assets without extra steps. This takes me back to what @socky used to post about "get us on bloody exchanges" seem like a sad hindsight.
Alas, I've let myself use @blocktrades for now...hoping places like Binance.US would list STEEM before I sign up for more exchanges.
I'm okay with KYC processes, but prefer not to be spread across multiple exchanges.
Yeah, I still have yet to sign up for Binance.us. I plan on it soon, but last I checked they were accepting deposits and purchases for ADA (the other coin I'm invested in) but weren't allowing trades or withdrawals. They probably allow it now as it makes no sense for anyone to transfer or purchase if they cant sell or withdraw, I just haven't had time to check.
Given the shakedown exchanges use on projects making them pay a fee to list, hopefully they would not require this again from the projects that already paid once to be on their international site. I would like to see them succeed, as my wariness on Coinbase has contributed to my shying away from making many purchases. The word of mouth online for them being thieves has branded them to many fearful people like myself.
I appreciate your posts on this. Not many seem capable of reaching across that divide to understand the disconnect between computer/crypto savvy folks and normal folks like myself who are the masses.
Oh you can totally purchase and withdraw ADA. You just have to wait for before you can withdraw. It's 10 days for ACH I think.
It's similar to Robinhood that you can deposit money and have credits to purchase immediately, but you can't withdraw until the bank transfer is complete. I have already made several purchases of ADA on Binance.US.
It would be unfortunate if there's a second listing fee. There's almost no way STINC would do it.
I have used Coinbase in its early days in late 2012, but I have moved off of it and used their Pro (then GDAX) when it became a thing. It remains a staple because it's convenient.
And yes, I do forget at times that people here aren't all savvy. There's always the assumption that if they are here, they must know.
No desire what so ever to do this. If I could just input my credit card info, like when I bought some steem monster cards and they gave me a percentage of the purchase price back in steem, I would have a lot more steem than I do now. (if they ever run that kind of a sell again, I may buy some more monster cards, hold them for awhile, then eventually sell them, for steem of course). It was the easiest way to buy steem, expensive, but it was a two fold purchase when steem monsters came out I wanted to try the game, and get some free steem in exchange.
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