The middle class and small businesses need to embrace cryptocurrencies as a form of payment if we are to see real cryptocurrency adoption
Why haven’t cryptocurrencies gone mainstream yet? Part of the problem may be that big banks and economists warn against investing in Bitcoin even as they quietly develop Blockchain applications to streamline their operations. They don’t want cryptocurrencies rocking their boat. But more importantly, the middle class and small businesses don’t want anything rocking their boat. Members of the middle class know that they may only be a couple of paychecks away from being homeless and any hiccup in the value of their 401(k) portfolio could force them to delay retirement. They don’t want to mess with something as volatile as Bitcoin even if it is hitting record highs lately. So if they mess with cryptocurrencies at all, they’re probably going to dabble with a few hundred dollars at most.
It’s a Feedback Loop
Hodl hodl hodl, and if you must spend cryptocurrencies, spend your Bitcoin Cash for the lower fees and faster transaction times. Right? However, it becomes a dangerous feedback loop when small businesses see that their target audiences are unwilling to use cryptocurrencies in their daily lives. When the middle class isn’t investing in cryptocurrencies, it naturally follows that they aren’t going to be spending cryptocurrencies at their local retailers. This becomes a problem for the rest of us who might be willing to buy a bottle of water with some DASH.
This can change if we insiders quit obsessing about when Bitcoin is going to reach its next record high and start actually using cryptocurrencies. I know guys who have lived on cryptocurrencies for years. Some Bitcointalk users who may not be longtime crypto-veterans but have enough experience to no longer be newbies have quit asking how they can buy bitcoins and started asking how they can earn bitcoins. This means the feedback loop that slows down mass adoption can be broken if cryptocurrency insiders take the three-pronged approach of creating “Quickbooks for Bitcoin,” educating the middle class about how cryptocurrencies can fit into their lives, and reaching out to businesses about the benefits of accepting cryptocurrencies.
Quickbooks for Bitcoin
They do say to never give away your best business ideas, but small business owners probably wish that there was a Quickbooks for cryptocurrencies. As things stand now, they have BitPay for Bitcoin, or they might use Coinpayments if they want to accept all major cryptocurrencies, and then they have to use Bitwage if they don’t want to manually send Bitcoin payments to multiple addresses to pay their employees in Bitcoin. There are very few wholesalers who accept cryptocurrencies. This makes cryptocurrencies a headache for accountants who would probably rather make their liquidity someone else’s problem.
Business owners like things to be pretty much predictable. The cryptocurrencies they choose to accept should be stable, usable, and (most importantly) have fast transactions. Bitcoin might be considered the “digital gold” of cryptocurrencies, but you don’t see most business owners accepting payment in gold coins, either. They might be more interested in accepting Litecoin or DASH for the faster payments and lower fees so that they can get their cryptocurrencies without wasting their customers’ time as they wait for payments to confirm.
This is something that people who try to sell cryptocurrencies to businesses don’t necessarily realize. The raw technology behind cryptocurrencies is better than the banking system, yes, but small business owners don’t necessarily have the time or inclination to implement something that doesn’t work right out of the box. Unless you’re offering to install BitPay PoS terminals, you might as well not go there. But if you can sell “Quickbooks for Bitcoin,” that’s a major score because then the business owner can accept cryptocurrencies, and then hit a single button to pay his or her employees in cryptocurrencies.
Source/More: Middle Class and Small Businesses Critical to Mass Crypto Adoption | Crypto Briefing
