Crypto Adoption Absolutely Requires Convenience… 🫳🎤 (2025)

No convenience. No adoption.

This unintentionally ended up being a crypto-specific companion piece to my other article How to Replace the US Dollar: The Real Power of Alternative Currencies. I love when things reference other things.

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Mainstream adoption of cryptocurrency has been on my mind for years. When I first got into it, everyone dreamed of walking into a local shop, pulling out their phone, and paying with the ease of Apple Pay, living entirely on crypto.

Quick. Easy. Reliable.

But around 2018-2019 the narrative shifted. It stopped being about mass adoption and the focus became institutional adoption of bitcoin. Essentially, after it’s hard fork, bitcoin’s underlying technology was crippled and became unusable as a currency; as a response the maximalist narrative shifted to match its new reality: as a highly speculative asset, no different than stocks. bitcoin maxis stopped publicly promoting bitcoin as a currency and instead focused on merely holding it- “never sell” they say. It’s not uncommon to see maxis pat themselves on the back for this.

The book Hijacking Bitcoin did a really great job at chronicling bitcoin’s hijacking and ultimate death as a currency so I won’t go into great detail here. Suffice it to say, bitcoin’s narrative shift from currency to gamblers token negatively shifted the rest of the crypto space as well- arguably setting mass adoption back, potentially for a decade or more.

What sparked my inspiration for this article was a recent 𝕏 post made by cryptocurrency advocate Joël Valenzuela. Check it out here:

Everyone knows I'm an advocate for many forms of digital cash, but I focus most of my time on Dash, because I still think it's our best, quickest path to financial sovereignty.

What would it take for another coin to rise to my standards? Let's start a thread!

First, to really…

— Joel Valenzuela (@TheDesertLynx) August 26, 2025

Essentially, Joël came up with a list of features he believed are necessary to aid in wider crypto adoption and looked at several coins to see how they measured up.

It’s a basic fundamental analysis- something I’m sort of passionate about. I studied the features he chose and realized there was a common theme: convenience. Things which made life easier as it relates to using crypto. They weren’t features that made the price pump, like burning coins to create artificial scarcity, they were usable features.

This is the difference between gamblers and visionaries. One thinks about their gains, the other works on solving big problems with experience and intuition. In the crypto space, visionaries are at a premium. We need people living the big ideas no one else is willing to push.

Why should you care what he thinks?

Joël is worth paying attention to on mass crypto adoption. He’s been living off cryptocurrency since 2015. That means he’s not using the legacy financial system to live his daily life, rent, food, entertainment, all paid for using cryptocurrencies.

You’d think crypto influencers who believe in cryptocurrencies would live this way but most don’t. They’re invested in crypto like a stock. They see it as a way to grow wealth†, rather than a daily driver to opt out of the parasitic legacy financial system.

Sure those influencers might have some experience paying for things with crypto but they fundamentally lack the actual experience of living their life off of crypto alone. Let’s be honest, going to a crypto convention and paying for a coffee from a crypto vender isn’t the same as walking into your local coffee shop and paying for one from someone who knows nothing about crypto.

†There’s nothing wrong with building wealth. In fact, I’m a wealth-generation educator. The world is suffering under a monetary regime created by psychopaths and pedophiles. If using crypto is your tool to build wealth, go for it, it’s smart to do. But if that’s all it is to you, you’re not helping fix the underlying problem that government currency is destroying the world. The sooner you ween yourselves off the dollar, the sooner the world heals. Opt-out peacefully with cryptocurrencies.

Influencers that don’t live off of crypto have no idea what goes into adoption if they aren’t living it. They can’t comprehend the reality of it. I wonder if that’s why they’re against scaling on chain or lowering transaction fees. It doesn’t apply to them. Why else would anyone be against convenience?

If you truly believe in something, you don’t half-ass it. Joël is living what he preaches. Fortunately, he’s not the only one.

It takes someone willing to go through the pain of finding what works and what doesn’t. And there is some initial pain.

You must ask yourself: How do you pay rent/mortgage? How do you pay other debts? Food? Entertainment? Taxes? How do pay for things when you leave the house or travel for an extended period of time? How do you pay employees or contractors? What about when a bank is required? And so much more.

This is the core question: “How do I pay for something using cryptocurrency?”

This question drives the thematic core of crypto adoption. It’s the most important question because that’s the question non-crypto users are going to ask when they inquire about switching to cryptocurrency and if it’s not easy they aren’t going to adopt it. It’s that simple.

This is why when normies inquire about blockchain my answer is always, “it’s just money”. I don’t explain what a blockchain is or how mining rewards work or anything else outside the scope of what it’s actually used for. I’ve made too many regular people suffer through technical explanations and I’m pretty sure they assumed it was too complex for them to use, ultimately defeating the purpose of my explanation.

How Mass Adoption Happens

Mass adoption of anything has to do with the utility of the thing being adopted. There’s three primary components to whether some thing or some technology will be adopted and I already mentioned them:

Quick. Easy. Reliable.

Those three properties round out the idea of utility, or usefulness.

If you look at any technology, whether or not it gets adopted is defined by the masses ability to actually use them- the quality of its utility.

• The internet was around for decades before someone realized a friendly user interface might make it more accessible to the masses.
• Gold has been around for thousands of years but lost favor to digital fiat. Recently Goldbacks made gold easy to use as cash and is seeing amazing adoption.
• Cars beat horses because they were faster, needed less upkeep, and went farther, but only after Ford made them reliable enough to trust.
• AI chatbots are the fastest adopted technology to date because they’re accessible through a web browser or smartphone, intuitive to use, and widely available.
• bitcoin, pre-2017, was gaining adoption by Microsoft, Steam, and other large corporations because it was fast, easy to use, and reliable.
• Variants of the smartphone including Palm Pilot and Handspring were around a full decade before the iPhone but they weren’t…

Quick. Easy. Reliable.

Mass adoption happens when a technology is just too convenient not to use.

I’m not claiming that all things that are quick, easy, and reliable will be adopted by the masses, I’m simply say those that do… are. Products or technologies have a better chance of being adopted when they have these properties.

This is why most cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin core, are so devastatingly disappointing today.

The Current State of Crypto Adoption is just more Friction

There was a time when it was easy to get your hands on crypto without government violating your privacy. It’s still possible but there are fewer doors now and people assume they’re probably illegal. Most people are using centralized exchanges to get their hands on regulated crypto, but that means forking over different forms of ID and giving away sensitive data that will be stolen by bad actors and made public on the dark web. We can blame government and exchanges for making this difficult… they rolled over.

In terms of mass adoption… it’s not a good start for the average person. If it’s difficult to get your hands on a cryptocurrency, most people won’t bother. Some apps have made the onboarding process easier, like Robinhood, but the KYC barriers remain, so many people just won’t bother.

Where else can people get crypto? You can sell things online for crypto or find someone you know and pay them with fiat in exchange for crypto… but be careful because the government might classify that as money transmitting and arrest you for a victimless crime. Ask for crypto donations then? 😞

So let’s say you jumped through the KYC hoops and made your first crypto purchase. Now what? To use it as a daily currency we have to get that crypto off the exchange and into a wallet we can control.

That means we need to download a wallet to our phones and create an address to send your crypto to. You go to the app store and type in ‘crypto wallet’, see what comes up, and are hit with hundreds of wallets. You download one, open it up, and can’t find the coin you bought. Then you realize, does this wallet even support the coin I bought? Now you have to do some research causing some friction. You download your wallet and follow the easy on screen instructions to make a crypto address.

Next you go to withdraw your crypto from the exchange using the crypto address you created and… discover the exchange is going to hold it for the next 5 business days for your protection, you know, to make sure you’re not a terrorist or something even though you’ve lived in the “Land of Liberty” your whole life.

Friction.

Five days later, you finally get the crypto in your wallet. Now… here’s where the real pain begins.

It’s Not a Cluster Headache, it’s Crypto

In my opinion, it’s worth the previous pain to get your hands on a technology which can free you from the much bigger pain of the legacy financial system. The previous headaches weren’t caused by the free market… it was the extensive overreach of your government. But in terms of mass adoption… it’s a big ask for most average people. Sadly, this is the farthest many are willing to travel.

Going forward, we cannot blame the government for the lack of mass adoption… we can blame the free market- ourselves.

Not every cryptocurrency is created equal. They all have different features and limitations and you won’t get a feel for what they’re like until you use them for real life transactions. In theory, you add the address, enter the amount, and hit send. In a perfect world it would be that simple, but most miss the mark by a mile.

Modern bitcoin core (btc) users can add an address, an amount, and hit send… but not before checking transaction fees which can be as high as $200 if the network is busy. If it’s clogged, your transaction sits there, unconfirmed for days, or weeks. Not convenient for the grocery store.

Other coins also have high fees or slow network times. Ethereum suffers from both. Tron has high transaction fees ($6/transaction is stupid). Some coins are so difficult you need a video tutorial (fucking GRIN). I’ve lost a ton of coins because what should’ve been easy was complex for no logical reason. Some require a memo. Some need both sender and receiver online at the same time. Some have long confirmation times. Some have multiple native coins (like Avalanche) and you have to ensure you’re using the right one.

I’ve used so many coins and there’s just a handful close to mass adoption but, to be honest, not one is good enough yet. Not one.

Why though?

Yes, Blame the Blockchain Developers

This is a controversial take but I stand by every word.

⚠️ I’m not calling out ALL blockchain developers. If you’re triggered calm down and assume I’m not talking about you. Chill out with this rad metal cover of Africa’s Toto. ⚠️

Most blockchain developers are not entrepreneurs. They’re developers. They love building things. They’re responsible for designing and architecting the way the blockchain works. It’s no small feat. A blockchain is a complex system. I have a lot of respect for the work that goes into making one.

But here’s the thing: They’re not product specialists. They’re not salesmen or business owners. They’re generally not customer facing and are often siloed within their team. They may not care about customer feedback unless it aligns with what they want to build.

Think of blockchain developers as the crew who lays the concrete foundation, and front-end developers as the team building the house. The foundation crew don’t necessarily care what’s built above… they focus on their slab. If it lacks rebar supports, house builders get stuck with a slick, unstable mess. End users notice when things go wrong and blame the house builders… because that’s the visible part they experience.

If blockchain developers implement code that hinders convenience, front-end developers building wallets and apps face an uphill battle. High fees, slow confirmations, and requirements like time locks preventing use for a period, adding mandatory memos, or blockchain syncing (which can take up to 24 hours or more) happen because convenience isn’t built into the protocol.

What front-end developers build around these limitations aren’t solutions- they’re prosthetics. Wallet developers can’t make transactions cheaper or faster without complex second-layer hacks. The result? Usability issues that make Apple Pay look like magic while crypto feels clunky.

Compare that to Coinbase, Kraken, and Robinhood… man… it’s night and day. Centralized exchanges are incentivized to make it easy despite onboarding headaches. Their apps are intuitive and reliable. The caveat? They hold your crypto… which means it’s not your crypto.

Ok… so why don’t blockchain developers focus on user experience?

Again… I’m making a generalization here so if you’re a blockchain dev, don’t assume I’m talking about you. lol

Fundamentally, they don’t because they’re not incentivized to. I’m a developer myself. I started building customer apps, then moved to build back-end infrastructure later. I was paid to make interfaces work. If customers couldn’t use it, they blamed me. To users, it either works or it doesn’t.

Back-end developers (what blockchain devs essentially are) generally don’t think about UX… they assume some front-end dev will make it work. Their goal? Secure, decentralized transactions. Little thought goes into scaling, low fees, or near instant/simple transactions. Again… I’m generalizing, not all coins are like this- but they’re too few.

This sole focus on security with little regard for usability is, in my estimation, why mass adoption hasn’t exploded. It’s an obvious blindspot. Almost no one talks about it. Centralized exchanges prioritize both security and usability… there’s no reason blockchain devs couldn’t do the same for the same reason.

There are technical challenges, sure. But with 22,000+ cryptocurrencies… there’s no excuse not to pilfer what’s working elsewhere.

Honestly, if I knew anyone in the real world, I’d lead an initiative to get a the best possible blockchain built. Not a joke. I’m serious about mass adoption and killing the legacy parasite financial system.

The End User

So if cryptocurrencies aren’t as good as they should be, why aren’t end users demanding blockchain-level convenience?

Let me quickly distinguish between different users.

The users I’ve been referring to are the average Joe. Normies. People who aren’t in crypto to speculate. They may not even be in crypto. These are the people who didn’t buy the Palm Pilot but bought the iPhone because it was easy to use. They didn’t use Netscape, they used AOL because it was easy. You know… normies. Your grandmother. Your aunt and uncle. Your English professor in college.

These people are, in my opinion, the real end user I’m aiming for. They’re the ones who will unshackle the legacy financial system from the government by using decentralized peer-to-peer cryptocurrencies at scale.

The most prolific end user now are investors and crypto bros. They believe more in wealth generation than the mission to change the world (nothing wrong with wealth generation but it’s not the same mission). They’re not fighting to end the parasite financial system… they’re trading cryptos FOR those parasite dollars. They push the crypto ecosystem to not scale or not have lower fees because it impacts their bottom line. It’s a cultural problem. It’s an incentive problem.

Relative to the normie population… investors and crypto bros are dwarfed. Once the average Joe uses crypto to pay for their coffee, nothing crypto bros or investors do will matter.

These are the end users I’m working to onboard. They’re the ones who will push crypto into the forefront… but we can’t do it without addressing the problems on the blockchain itself.

The Optimistic Path Forward

Joël’s post made me passionately write about all this because it hit something fundamental: convenience is primary. We already know how to implement security- it might be complex work, but it’s ultimately routine. Convenience needs to lead.

It’s the only path forward toward crypto adoption. I know the idea of convenience can sound trivial but it’s role in adoption is undeniable. If normies can use CashApp but can’t pay their bills with crypto because it’s hard to use, that’s a huge red flag something is wrong.

We need a movement that pushes blockchain developers to build things that make it easier for front-end developers and the end user. If we can’t do that… there’s no sense continuing because nothing else is as important, including privacy (There’s an argument that privacy is just as important… but what good is privacy if the world can’t use it because it’s hard to use? I’m looking at you GRIN!).

I’ve been radicalized to promote convenience as much as privacy because without it, the parasitic financial institutions win and normies will never know financial freedom.

What Features Make a Crypto Ready for Mass Adoption?

I was fully planning on making a comprehensive list of features I thought were important to crypto adoption like Joël did but I realized I didn’t need to.

You do.

You need to figure it out for yourself and get vocal. Find the pain points when using a crypto. Find the things that would make your life easier and ask for changes… respectfully at first… get louder if they refuse to hear you. The more people push the pain they experience to developers, the more likely they are to do the things you want. If they don’t, consider other options and share your experience. Reputation matters and if a blockchain doesn’t make your life easier, let others know.

Obviously, don’t be a douchebag. It takes time to build things so watch and see if they’re making changes or if it’s on the future roadmap. It takes no effort to be kind but firm.

I had a really great experience with the Zano dev team. I asked about a feature needed for a business case that didn’t exist yet. I outlined the specific use case, how other chains do it, they spoke with me about it, and found the time to implement it! They were great!

There’s no reason we couldn’t radically change the narratives on many blockchains. I think it’s worth it for the long term.

It’s on you now

There’s a big topic I didn’t talk much about. And that’s what it’s like living completely on crypto. I’ll save that for another day. But if you’re interested in that topic right now start following Joël Valenzuela on 𝕏. Or you can follow Aaron Day on 𝕏- another passionate crypto advocate who also knows what it takes to get off the dollar and live exclusively on crypto. Both share a lot of useful information and have the experience to understand what it really takes to make crypto reach the masses.

Endgame

I touched on two big topics: accessibility of the coins and convenience.

1. If you can’t get the coins easily, you lose potential users.
2. If you can’t use the coins easily, you lose users.

The first is hard to get around because it requires jumping through exchange hoops, learning about mining, selling products or services for coins, or asking for donations. [I might even add this: You have a right to peaceful civil disobedience and doing anything moral, even if it’s illegal, is your natural born right to engage in. I’m not saying break laws… I’m saying do what is morally right. Get your coins. Help others get their’s.]

The second is easy to get around because the tech exists to make it happen. We just need to respectfully pressure developers to make blockchains easy to use at the protocol level.

Some coins are a pleasure to use because they are convenient: Choose a sender, enter the amount, and hit send. Cheap, near instant, no headaches.

We can still have the dream of the crypto future, unbound from the surveillance dollar. We have to fight for it where it counts. We have to consider the normies… they’re the ones who will tear down the legacy system… and we can’t do it without them. Crypto adoption is within reach if we so choose.

I’ll end it with this…

Crypto has to be at least as easy to use as the dollar if it’s ever going to replace it.

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