Welcome to Around the Block where we go around the blockchain industry to get condensed crypto answers on important topics from thought leaders, market analysts, and project founders. For this edition, we asked 33 individuals:
In one sentence or less, what do you think crypto needs to reach mass adoption?
1) Camila Russo
“The single biggest hurdle for users continues to be going from their local currency, no matter where they're based, into cryptocurrency; crypto needs better fiat on and off ramps to reach mainstream adoption.”
Chiefess at The Defiant | Writing a book on Ethereum with @HarperCollins | Previously at Bloomberg @Business in New York, Madrid & Buenos Aires | Chilena
2) Anthony Sassano
“I believe that crypto needs ubiquitous privacy technology and tools before it has any sort of chance of going mainstream.” - Anthony Sassano
Product Marketing Manager @SetProtocol. Co-Founder @ethhub_io and Co-Host of the Into the Ether podcast with @econoar. Advisor @mstable_
3) Hsin-Ju Chuang
“It comes down to "trust." The systems that we build can be trustless and decentralized BUT there will never be mainstream adoption UNLESS the builders of these systems are able to convince the masses to "trust" the tech via better industry security standards, education, and building hard things which tackle unsexy, real-world pain points.”
CEO & Founder of @DystopiaLabs | Prev: Head of Growth at @StellarOrg, Head of Growth @Solana, and a Director @TQTezos
Dystopia Labs is hosting a Virtual Summit from May 1-4th. Get your free tickets here.
4) Ben Sparango
“Crypto needs a moment of financial instability to allow the larger majority of the world to question their belief of what money is.”
Research @MulticoinCap | Philadelphia Maximalist
5) Niran Babalola
“Blockchains are social technology, so to go mainstream, we need to build apps that give communities some sort of super power that makes them worth using.”
Founder of @PanvalaHQ | Economic performance artist | Prev: @ConsenSys / @ConsenSysAudits
6) David Utrobin
“Besides a decentralized and stable crypto like Dai, I think the real catalyst will be a mobile app with a really smooth user experience as easy to use as Venmo for transacting, with built-in access to a suite of other apps that provide earning opportunities and games that can be played with friends.”
Community Development Lead @MakerDao | A Man after Truth, Depth, and Life I Perpetual Good Energy Machine
7) The Crypto Lark
“The one thing crypto needs to go mainstream is compelling use cases,and day by day we see those use cases taking shape from useful defi, to fun gaming, to life saving remittances.”
@TheCryptoLark | Entrepreneur | #Crypto Enthusiast | Lover, and content creator | BTC LN Tips appreciated
8) Hugh Karp
“People need to feel confident and secure, especially when dealing with money, so we need to build safety nets and other protection mechanisms like insurance for when things goes wrong”
Founder @NexusMutual
9) Ryan Adams
“Going bankless is better than staying banked. When that statement becomes true for mainstream, they'll join us.”
Crypto investor | Level up your crypto finance game thru my Bankless program | Founder of Mythos
10) Wendy O
“Mass adoption is a long way away but will occur once crypto improves the lives of individuals and has an easy system of on-ramps for anyone to access.”
Crypto Meetup Host | Charts | Marketing | Events | Biz inquiries: CryptoWendyO@protonmail.com | YouTube Media @The_O_Show_ | Linktree
11) Chris Blec
Decentralized crypto will only go "mainstream" once the world's governments feel like they have it under control, therefore, a big part of me hopes that it never goes "mainstream"
Founder @_defiwatch_ | Defi Educator on Youtube
12) Charlie Smith
“Mass adoption of crypto will occur in the developing world, where the value prop of sovereign wealth transfer and storage is obvious to people not just intellectually appealing, and it will happen only when we create great products built entirely with those users in mind.”
Head of BD & Marketing at @ReserveProtocol | Follow on Medium | Follow on Twitter
13) Scott Melker
“Crypto needs the Fed money printer to overheat and explode.”
Crypto Trader | Advisor | Consultant | Ex DJ + Producer | Opportunities: sales@blockworksgroup.io | Podcast: The Wolf of All Streets
14) Justin Wu
“Crypto has to collaborate with pure Fintech to go mainstream. We have to offer a better solution against old archaic financial systems that provide value and efficiency gains for mass acceptance.”
“Hustle beats talent when talent doesn't hustle" | Growth Marketer | B2B | DeFi | Follow on LinkedIn
15) Evan Kuo
“I think hypercorrelation is one of the biggest problems standing in the way of mainstream adoption as an asset class, neither investors nor projects can yet reduce risk by diversification.”
Creator of @AmpleforthOrg - a synthetic commodity money | thinks global instability is bad, orthogonal assets are good | Ampleforth Website
16) Paul R. Berg
“DeFi needs more regulatory clarity to grow bigger - Governments should provide authoritative info on what smart contracts and tokens are, how to launch a DeFi company and the relationship between smart contracts, business reporting and taxes.”
Founder @SablierHQ | contributor @Ethereum | Previously engineering @AztecProtocol | Alum @join_ef
17) Lea Thompson
“I think we as a community need to get more creative with the type of content we share and be willing to re-define what crypto education could look like in order to reach new and more diverse audiences.” - Lea Thompson
Founder of Girl Gone Crypto | Learn more at https://www.lealovescrypto.com/
18) Mike Elias
“Crypto needs to solve a huge, sexy problem in a way that's easy to understand.”
“the Blackbeard of armchair psychology” | 3D Trading @gLiquidity | Founder @Ideamarkets_
19) Nick Fett
“Crypto will go mainstream once we get an over-reaching government going a step too far.”
CTO at @WeAreTellor | tellor.io
20) Clayton Roche
“All currency is a meme, and blockchain needs its breakthrough meme to become valuable in the minds of muggles.”
An econ nerd who woke up in crypto land | Head of DeFi with @GetMosendo | Join Defi Nation
21) Farid Rached
“To reach mainstream adoption blockchain apps simply need to work without relying on external wallets, extensions and browsers to run properly.”
Pushing a decentralised future forward | Growing @Fortmatic & @Meet_Magic | Make passwords obsolete | Try Magic Link
22) Crypto Yoda
“An evidently failing global financial system, better ways to anonymously purchase and transact cryptocurrency, and a lot of patience.”
Crypto Enthusiast, Technical Analyst, Writer | Shamanic Tendencies. Not Taking the Easy Road. Breathing Charts, Living Crypto since 2014 | https://cryptoyoda1338.com/
23) Jack Yeu
“Applications on the blockchain needs to be intuitive to ensure a smooth user experience that removes the technicalities of the user’s interaction with the blockchain.”
Co-founder @SwitcheoNetwork
24) Jeff Kirdeikis
“Easy, understandable, and sexy user-facing platforms.”
Founder of the world’s most engaged monetized social media platform | @Uptrennd | Running the worlds largest Crypto FB group | Host of @TheBTC_Podcast
25) Defi Dude
“To go mainstream, crypto needs better key management, you can’t expect the world to responsibly secure a dozen words on a piece of paper.”
Community @KyberNetwork | Training @ETHRobot | Hosting @ChicagoDeFi | Join the ETH Network Discord
26) Ty Daniel Smith
“Most people don't care about financial privacy or sovereignty from central banks so, for cryptocurrencies to become more widely adopted, they need to be more convenient and less expensive to transact in than the current model.”
Founder @Coinbound_io & Cannabound | Growing crypto & cannabis companies & creators | Host @ Crypto Marketing Show | Coinbound Newsletter
27) Alex Hoffmann
“Rapid experimentation - Mainstream adoption requires unique use cases; the crypto industry is so exciting and the use cases are so limitless that builders often "over engineer" without validating demand for the concept first via rapid experimentation.”
Operator | Owner @AxiomFinance | Previously @ShapeShift_io + @BatsGlobal
28) Zachary Fitzner
“There need to be more unique use cases that you can't simply access with fiat - many of which are being built using Defi.”
CEO @Fitznerblockchn | An idealist dreamin up ways to fix our financial systems with new tech
29) Ondrej Pilny
“Crypto needs just more time for mainstream adoption.”
Co-founded @baserank1 | Freedom lover, crypto investor and digital nomad. Building the future decentralized autonomous investment rating organization.
30) Eric Choe
“In order for crypto to be mainstream, we need to start realizing the actual technology blockchain and cryptocurrency can bring to big businesses - not just for trading and speculation.”
Professional Trader | Mentioned on @FORBES, @CoinDesk, and @Cointelegraph | View on TradingView
31) David Hsiao
“The next step is to improve education and user experience and to remove bad players from the industry. At present, it's difficult to use and hard to understand. Crypto in 2020 is still very much like the post-bubble internet.”
CEO of @blockjournal and Black Diamond Group | Block Journal
32) Benjamin J. Cowen
“Time.”
Crypto Quantitative Analysis | PhD Engineering | View Youtube Channel
33) Alex Svanevik
“Crypto needs to win over business customers before retail. The added value of crypto for companies is much larger than many people realize. ”
Data Scientist | Co-founder @d5_dao
Note from the Author
I really enjoyed the process of connecting with so many people and putting this first list together. If you found any value in this type of content and want me to keep it going, please let me know on Twitter what topic/question I should cover next and tag individuals you would like answers from.