Fasten your seatbelt: Crypto’s impact on marketing has only just begun

October 17, 2021 Coin Telegraph

The marketing will adjust to a new crypto future, with a decentralized consumer community, operating via Web 3.0.

The road to the adoption of blockchain and crypto in the marketing industry is a long and winding road. But make no mistake about it: Transformation is well on its way and the road will soon turn to a highway.

As someone who has been a creative director, agency owner/partner, strategic planner, chief marketing officer for fintech startups and an entrepreneur, I’ve seen the marketing industry from multiple vantage points.

What’s common in marketing revolutions?

And while every so-called “marketing revolution” takes a somewhat different path, there are many commonalities. First of all, marketing agencies will get ahead of the curve as a way to exhibit their competitive advantage and value to their clients. But a majority of brand marketers will move more slowly: They have the challenge of “socializing” change internally, are lured by the opportunity for competitive differentiation but also inherently more cautious, often have large and complex systems issues, and require leadership with a certain risk tolerance. It’s why companies like McDonald’s and Walmart are dipping their toes into crypto, yet still have a way to go.

Secondly, as with most transformative moments in marketing, a core challenge is a behavioral one: How to get customers/consumers to take that first step … to overcome confusion, fear/distrust, or simple inertia to make that first transaction. Think: the early days of the internet and connecting a modem for a dial-up connection; having to incent folks to adopt online banking and pay their first bill or electronically deposit their first check; or QR-codes, which were a big dud until Apple built a QR reader right in the iPhone’s camera.

The common denominator: simplicity. It’s why asking mainstream consumers to navigate an infinite number of exchanges, Metamask, Uniswap, hot and cold wallets, and the like is a tall task. Yes, early adopters are doing just fine, but they’re just a sliver of the total universe of the general population.

Third, innovation happens because there are problems to be solved. From the Cypherpunks to modern-day evangelists, champions of crypto talk of transforming how privacy, decentralization and the democratization of money will change the world. For marketers, the issues that have prevailed so far are related, but a bit more modest.

For example, projects like Lucidity and Rebel AI (now Logiq) offer to tackle the vexing issue of bot-driven ad fraud in digital marketing. The browser Brave, and its corresponding token, BAT, promise to tackle data privacy when searching the web. And AdsDax and IBM are working to drive more accountability and transparency in digital marketing performance.

Just around the corner

The onramp to the blockchain/crypto highway in marketing can be found all around us, right now. Consider:

Payments: With the rise of crypto credit cards like those offered by Coinbase, Crypto.com, BlcokFi… the ability to pay with crypto on PayPal… buy now, pay later (BNPL) platforms like Klarna integrating Safello… and the dominance of stablecoins, it’s safe to say the payments category is rapidly evolving and will have a material impact on how products and services engage their customers.

Analytics: Data analytics is core to the digital marketing revolution, and the ability for marketers to leverage it shows tremendous potential in a decentralized ecosystem. The use cases for oracles like Chainlink, querying tools such as The Graph and onChain analytics have only scratched the surface of their potential for brand marketers.

Content creation: The rights of content creators and publishers have long been a hot button in the marketing ecosystem. Projects like Audius are demonstrating how a decentralized ledger has the potential to be a gamechanger in protecting copyrights, giving consumers more choice in how they pay for and consume content, and how content is stored and distributed.

Social media: Twitter recently announced an executive role to spearhead its “BlueSky” exploratory for a decentralized standard for social media. Facebook is purportedly piloting a stablecoin-based digital currency of its own, dubbed Diem. Social media and content marketing have, arguably, been at the forefront of the brand marketing playbook over the past five years; there’s little reason to believe that that will not remain the case.

Loyalty: Loyalty/customer relationship management programs, which often struggle with creating a “currency” to deliver as a reward to motivate true behavior change vs. merely defending defection, will find an entirely new avenue to go down in NFTs — which projects like Cryptibles and Enjin is offering. Moreover, as experiences outpace “stuff” as a coveted reward for loyalty, the promise of NFTs for “digital tickets” to unique experiences like that offered by Microsoft, collectible trading and auctions, and the ability to connect in-person events with a digital experience is an exciting new frontier.

Gamification: The impressive growth of Axie Infinity demonstrates just how powerful the potential for play-to-earn gaming and NFTs can be. Though Axie is a self-contained game, it portends a future where brands will gamify marketing strategies of their own in a semi-decentralized way, and even create their own play-to-earn games.

Ingredient brands: Will there come a time when the blockchain that a product/service is built on becomes an “ingredient brand” much the way Visa or Mastercard is to an issuing bank’s credit card, or Intel is to a Windows-based computer? Will we see the likes of NBA Top Shot powered by Flow? Given all the investor interest in crypto projects, it’s not an outlandish thought.

Peering into the future: The Metaverse

If history is any guide, the decentralized digital future will fundamentally change how marketing is done, as the UX of the technology gets easier and more intuitive, the utility becomes more obvious and profound, adoption increases, and behavioral hurdles are slowly but surely overcome.

So while I previously offered my thesis for the rise of the user-generated brand (UGB), I’d like to now peer into the future and paint a picture of a personal Web 3.0, decentralized consumer community.

Imagine this: Web 3.0 is firmly in place and blockchain technology and crypto are ubiquitous. The battles over regulation have largely been fought. Transaction speed, scalability and resilience are no longer questioned. And, after several waves of merged projects, consolidation and an inevitable shakeout, there are dominant projects in every category.

Now, everyone on the internet has a private key on a blockchain within their personalized metaverse, within which they can build their “private house” (which they can name as they wish). Simple to access, their Metaverse House (MVH) will be where they can store, explore and procure using their universal wallet.

Store

Their MVH will be home to their electronic health record and legal documents, profile including interests and preferences, NFTs (which they can “hang” on their virtual walls), and transaction histories. Those items that they wish to be public can be accessed utilizing a privacy “view key.” Everything else is private and secure.

Explore

Here, consumers get paid in crypto for agreeing to be targeted for advertising. So, for example, if someone wants a brand like Nexium to tell them how they can eliminate their acid reflux, they’ll simply have to make all or part of their health record public using their view key. When they demonstrably engage the ad unit, they’ll receive their “reward” as stipulated in their smart contract. If they’re researching a new car and would like a brand to show them stuff, send offers, etc., they’ll simply drop their public key on its website and voila! it’ll show up in their MVH… and keep showing up as the advertiser deems strategically effective in moving a prospect down a decision funnel until said prospect revokes the key.

Because consumers aren’t always aware of what could solve a problem or add value to their lives, they’ll toggle on the option to Surprise Me! For this, advertisers will have to pay a premium — which means they’ll need to be more selective, not less, in whom they target, using AI/predictive modeling that analyzes those publicly accessible profiles and transaction histories.

And because, by this time, virtually all advertising will be addressable, the ability to deliver what people truly want, when they want it, will be profound.

When people consume content — whether it’s streaming video, an article online or podcast — they’ll pay for it using their universal wallet. It won’t be a monthly subscription, mind you. You’ll have a choice: By the amount of time on site, individual content accessed or any other arrangement that the publisher wants to offer its customers. Instead of big monthly chunks, it’ll be in very small bite-sized payments.

Because their MVH chain time-stamps transactions across multiple sites and services, a new kind of loyalty program will be conceivable — one in which a family of cross-sector brands on a truly global scale can band together to create something the likes of Upromise and Plenti could never pull off.

Need auto insurance? Instead of getting it from an underwriter like Geico, Progressive or State Farm, you’ll connect with others in a peer-to-peer smart contract cooperative, with arbitrators who act as adjusters and receive fees for every “verdict.”

I can go on and on.

Procure

Whether you have stablecoins issued by the country you live in or any other coins in your universal wallet, you’ll be able to do all your shopping and “banking” directly from your MVH. You’ll be empowered to ask retailers to essentially bid for your business — by price, added value services, bundled offers, etc. Want to buy something from a store halfway around the planet? No problem; the currency exchange is decentralized and automatic.

Consumers will have full control over how much, if any, of their shopping transactions they want to be “public” — meaning open to marketing analytics for the reasons described above. Done prudently by advertisers, consumers will see great value over time in just how helpful, vs. harassing brands that covet their business can be.

So is this vision of a new, blockchain-centric marketing universe fanciful? Possible? You decide.

Regardless, in the inimitable words of Ken Kesey, when it comes to roads worth traveling, either you’re on the bus, or you’re off the bus.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Rich Feldman currently leads marketing for Finario, an enterprise capital planning SaaS provider. Prior, he was chief marketing officer at PrimaHealth Credit and was an agency owner/partner and chief strategy officer at Doner CX (part of the MDC Partners Network), where he led the CRM, analytics, digital media and other strategic areas of the business. Rich has lectured on strategy at the New York University Master’s Program in Marketing, at Syracuse University and is an adjunct professor at Western Connecticut University — where he is an advisory board member of the Ancell School of Business. He is also the author of the book, Deconstructing Creative Strategy.

Money in 2030: A future where DeFi and CBDCs can work together

October 3, 2021 Coin Telegraph

CBDC

In coexistence with mutual benefits, decentralized finance and central bank digital currencies will finally make money universally available worldwide.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) is changing the way that people all over the world think about money faster than any previous financial revolution. Banks, which have monopolized the way we’ve accessed money since antiquity, are finally seeing their status being challenged. Now, it’s DeFi which is starting to provide an alternative that could turn the economic landscape on its head and democratize access to finance.

This seismic shift in power away from governments and banks and towards real people is long overdue, particularly in developing nations where DeFi is already emerging as a tool for remittances and small loans. Financial inclusion is another significant advantage that DeFi can deliver, particularly when 1.7 billion adults remain unbanked.

The growth of the DeFi space is staggering. By taking concepts from traditional finance and turning these into transparent protocols through smart contracts, DeFi provides a trustless ecosystem that delivers anything from insurance to loans to savings accounts. The appeal for DeFi is evident, with the total value of assets held in DeFi financial products nearly topping $175 billion.

Yet, with DeFi on the rise and governments and banks not wanting to lose control of the monetary system, they are turning their attention to issuing digital currencies themselves. Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are seen as a way of maintaining control over the monetary system while giving users faster and cheaper transactions. If we fast forward to the year 2030, what elements of decentralization can we expect to see in our everyday lives?

DeFi in the future

Imagine, if you will, that the year is 2030. Célia, a young Parisian woman, pulls out her phone to buy a Eurostar ticket from Paris to London. When she reaches the payment screen, she chooses her primary digital wallet. Switching over to her wallet, Célia sees that her digital euro balance has gone down. Nowadays, nobody holds cash savings, as loans can be taken out and paid back within a person’s wallet depending on the value of any assets they own and are paid back automatically over time.

While DeFi is playing a primary role in 2030, so, too, are CBDCs, which have become the default tool for banks worldwide. China is leading the way in following the success of its previous trials. However, they lean toward greater state control, scrutiny and censorship. As a result, DeFi has become the primary way that individuals who value freedom choose to manage finances and now underpins the world financial system. And because of DeFi’s prominence, we've said goodbye to bank accounts, enabling us to access and use our money anywhere at any time and loans to be borrowed when required.

Cryptocurrency’s aim to make money universally available worldwide means that underlying DeFi protocols provide liquidity on swaps, borrowing and lending. And despite the complexity of DeFi, end users are not aware that they’re interacting with these global liquidity sources directly as complete privacy is ensured on all DeFi and spending.

On top of that, we transact all international payments on layer two zero-knowledge proof rollups (zk-Rollups), a scaling solution that bundles up hundreds of transactions off-chain into an Ethereum smart contract thus helping to reduce congestion on the blockchain. A cryptographic proof, known as a SNARK, is produced, ensuring the validity proof and is posted on layer one. Delivering free and open alternatives to government money, Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and permissionless stablecoins are spent and swapped straightaway for any major government coins.

Defeating DeFi’s challenges

The way DeFi is going, this is certainly a plausible future for it. Ultimately, though, for DeFi to reach what many may consider a utopian future, some hurdles need to be overcome first.

One area to consider is the barriers to widespread adoption. For instance, the vulnerability of smart contracts, the unpredictability of the DeFi market, regulatory issues and accessibility to emerging technologies.

Other centers around the space being too complex for the average trader or investor. And blockchain inefficiency is a problem that needs to be addressed, particularly relating to energy consumption and the cost of transactions on Layer 1 protocols on the blockchain. While alternatives have so far compromised on security, early-stage technological solutions are coming to the fore. Examples of this include ZK-proof cryptography, or layer-two solutions, packing more transactions into the space, and therefore reducing cost.

Of course, some of DeFi’s challenges can’t be mentioned without talking about the naysayers. For instance, Dan Berkovitz, Commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), believes that DeFi is a “bad idea.” And Tom Mutton, the Bank of England’s fintech director, had said that any CBDC would be “ten times more efficient per transaction” than Bitcoin. Yet, one has to question if he realizes that zk-Rollups are already 1,000 times more efficient than Bitcoin?

What is DeFi doing to overcome these hurdles?

More education is needed. The DeFi Education Fund is an example of one organization attempting to educate policymakers on the benefits of the DeFi ecosystem and to help achieve a regulatory framework for it. In a bid to boost knowledge of DeFi, it’s funding applicants working on DeFi research and advocacy in legal research and DeFi practices, among other things. With an increased understanding of DeFi, mainstream adoption will be easier as new users are onboarded.

Another means of expanding the number of users is by improving the user’s experience. This is already seen with layer-two protocols, which are building wallets and infrastructure that support DeFi. And by doing so, they remove friction and cost and deliver better ways for users to recover lost keys while making the space less complex.

Long-term, though, regulatory clarity is something that will give confidence to traditional investment service providers such as banks and institutions while creating a pathway for allowing users to access DeFi on their terms within existing apps. What’s great about this is that many customers won’t even know they are interacting with a blockchain behind the scenes as all the complex wallet interactions will be hidden. It is this collaboration between traditional finance and decentralized finance that could give DeFi the push it needs to broaden further into the mainstream.

Taking action now

It’s clear that DeFi is here to stay and could become the core of finance in 2030. For that to happen though, more needs to be done today.

Right now, it’s the growing development of CBDCs that pose both a threat and an opportunity to DeFi as more nations experiment with them and governments begin to adopt them. But, just because CBDCs are gaining pace, that doesn’t mean DeFi can’t find its place in our future world too.

Yet, if people want to control their own money and know where it’s coming from while giving developing nations access to banking, then DeFi is where the future is heading. The core elements of DeFi infrastructure, such as decentralized exchanges (DEXs), borrowing and lending protocols, exchange aggregators that automatically find the best prices and cross-chain bridges, will also be needed by CBDCs in the future if these government currencies want to be able to interoperate with each other and be used as fully digital money.

DeFi is therefore playing a role as an innovation laboratory, allowing different infrastructure issues to get tested at a break-neck pace and ensuring that the correct infrastructure required by CBDCs will already be available when they are being rolled out around the world. CBDCs that adapt to make use of the rapid innovation in public blockchains and DeFi will benefit through connection to massive liquidity pools, allowing users, for example, to instantly swap between digital euro and Ethereum, or to use DeFi infrastructure to earn a yield on the digital pound.

It’s the CBDCs that are purposely disconnected from DeFi that will lose out to private stablecoins — one of the fastest-growing sections of the crypto industry. But, we do not need to rush to make this a contemporary reality. There are plenty of hurdles that DeFi needs to overcome before we see the kind of mainstream adoption that becomes present in everyday life.

By 2030, our Parisian friend Célia may not know or care what part of her transactions are CBDC and DeFi, and it shouldn't matter to her. There is still lots of work to be done to make that a reality. We hope that by 2030, Célia will be just one of the hundreds of millions of individuals who are enjoying the bright uplands of a decentralized financial world, one that will have forever changed the way we view money.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Will Harborne is a co-founder and CEO of DeversiFi, a layer-two DeFi trading platform powered by StarkWare’s scalable technology. Will has worked on technology consulting projects, first at Cambridge Consultants and then at IBM, before transitioning into work full-time in the public blockchain space and joining Bitfinex in 2017. There, he led several projects before combining his experience with his passion for Ethereum's ecosystem of permissionless innovation to help spin out Ethfinex. Will is a member of the Melon Technical Council — one of the first major governance experiments for a blockchain-based protocol. He also holds a Masters of Engineering from the University of Cambridge.

Crypto is the next step toward a cashless society

June 13, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Cash

It will take some time for consumers to warm up to crypto, but education is the key to its mass adoption.

From QR code payments to mobile banking apps, consumers worldwide are increasingly reliant on digital payment solutions, especially as mobile technology becomes more ubiquitous. Government-led efforts in driving cashless economies have been a key factor, with countries such as Singapore or the Philippines seeing their central banks driving the adoption of contactless payments during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, usage rates for digital payments platforms have recorded promising growth, even as high as 5,000% in the Philippines alone.

This unprecedented rise in cashless payments is also paving the way for the broader adoption of crypto, with the number of crypto users worldwide hitting around 106 million in January. While this marks an impressive 15% month-on-month growth, it is still just a drop in the ocean when compared to the 4.7 billion people who have access to the internet.

But as crypto continues to command headlines, what will it take for mass adoption to happen?

A new model of financial accessibility

Today, billions of people worldwide are unable to access even the most basic financial services via traditional means, and thus are unable to save or manage their money securely. In times of economic devastation, such as this past year in which global economies have been staggered by the impact of COVID-19, the vast gap between rich and poor has become abundantly clear. The global pandemic has only perpetuated the absence of inclusive financial infrastructure, which has led to approximately one-third of the global population having no financial safety net to fall back on.

With crypto wallets, however, anyone can transfer their crypto internationally without needing to maintain a minimum balance in their account, as long as they have an internet connection. As crypto applications are built on decentralised blockchains, transactions are performed on a peer-to-peer basis in the absence of traditional intermediaries such as bankers or brokerage houses. This results in significant savings in transaction costs, as traditional cross-border remittance fees for small amounts can be as high as 7% after taking into account intermediaries’ fees on both the sender and recipient side. Meanwhile, the same fees for cryptocurrencies are often less than 1 percent — regardless of transaction amount.

Furthermore, highly decentralised platforms are permissionless, meaning that anyone with a crypto wallet and internet connection can lend, remit or trade their crypto without validation by a central authority or intermediary. Instead, transactions are executed by smart contracts, which automate them as long as pre-encoded conditions are met. Beyond the cost savings, consider the time savings as well. Remittance transactions can take several days to be processed, whereas cryptocurrencies can be transferred in mere minutes.

However, most crypto platforms still ask for some form of formal identification as part of their identity verification and Know Your Customer (KYC) process. This can range from a phone number to photo ID to proof of residential address. Some platforms adopt a multi-tier approach in which the more information that users provide, the more services they can access. While necessary for KYC and Anti-Money Laundering compliance, this poses barriers to users who do not own any formal identification documents.

Having said that, some decentralised exchanges, or DEXs, still honour the principles of anonymity and trustless working by not enforcing KYC on their users. The elimination of account verification and waiting time for approval has drawn many towards these types of DEXs — such as PancakeSwap, Uniswap and DeFiChain’s DEX — and has made finance truly accessible and inclusive for all.

Beyond simple transactions, recent innovations in the crypto space promise a much more equitable financial system where the unbanked and underbanked can access more means to build wealth. While DeFi products, such as token holding and staking on a DEX, might be a little too advanced for this group of users at the moment, simplified centralized decentralized finance (CeDeFi) services and improvements in financial literacy over time will help to open the door to these inclusive wealth creation opportunities.

Education is key to crypto adoption at scale

Widespread adoption of digital payment technologies, such as QR codes and biometrics, is definitely a promising sign that consumers have become more digitally savvy than ever before. In the Asia Pacific, more than 90% of surveyed respondents said they would consider at least one new payment method in the next year.

In addition to new payment technologies, the proliferation of retail investing has led to a paradigm shift in the investment landscape, with trading activities doubling over the past year. User-friendly platforms such as Robinhood and their well-known crypto counterparts — such as Coinbase — have made investing much more accessible to non-institutional investors.

This historic rise in cashless payments and retail investing saw the public gain more exposure to different asset types. However, in the United States, a staggering 84% of adults are either uninterested in cryptocurrencies or have never heard of them. While this could be attributable to the seemingly intimidating technicalities involved, we are now in a good place to gradually transition towards a more crypto-forward society.

For now, there’s much more to be done to help mainstream consumers gain a better understanding of crypto. Crypto projects, for one, would do well to invest more resources towards creating educational content to bridge the knowledge gap — whether through guides or detailed explainers. Meanwhile, taking on a more transparency-focused approach that looks to debunk misconceptions and ensure that users are aware of the risks associated with crypto, will enable those users to navigate their entry into the space with greater ease and confidence.

Crypto is the MVP in the cashless drive

As conversations on cryptocurrencies evolve, governments are taking note. While cash will not be eliminated any time soon, as many as 86% of central banks around the world are looking into central bank digital currencies in their quest to go cashless. The world’s first central bank digital currency (CBDC) — the Sand Dollar — was announced by the Central Bank of the Bahamas way back in 2018 and officially launched in October last year. The technology team behind this project was led by U-Zyn Chua, who went on to co-found DeFiChain.

Although CBDCs will be regulated by a central authority, their adoption will send a profound message to market participants on the legitimacy of digital currencies. The introduction of CBDCs is thus a much-needed springboard to catalyse large-scale crypto adoption.

In the short term, crypto is not going to replace the existing financial system, but will instead carve out its own ecosystem that is fit for a new generation of digital-first, financially savvy users. While it will take some time for consumers to warm up to crypto, the nascent technology will prove its worth in due time by offering cheaper, safer and more inclusive financial services for all.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Julian Hosp is the CEO and a co-founder of Cake DeFi, a platform dedicated to providing access to decentralized financial services and applications. He is also the chairman of DeFiChain, a DeFi platform built on the Bitcoin network. Julian is an active speaker for the Washington Speakers Bureau and an adviser for the EU’s blockchain groups. Julian graduated from Medizinische Universitat Innsbruck with a Doctor of Medicine in human medicine.

Bitcoin likely won’t entirely replace current financial system, Coin Center director says

May 28, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Center

Bitcoin may not make the current monetary and financial system extinct, although its usage will likely vary depending on one’s location.

Bitcoin may not mean an end to traditional currency and banking, according to Peter Van Valkenburgh, research director at Coin Center.

“I think there’s folks in the Bitcoin community who probably make too many noises about how Bitcoin is going to dominate all economic systems and nobody will be using dollars anymore, and nobody will be using banks anymore, and I think that’s actually a little foolhardy,” Van Valkenburgh said in a Friday interview with the Washington Journal on C-Span.

“The fact of the matter is that there’s going to be times when a Bitcoin transaction is what you want. Definitely if you are in an oppressive state like Nigeria or Belarus you might find it more useful to use Bitcoin. In the U.S., we have a pretty stable banking system. We have the rule of law, we have a pretty well-functioning government.”

The way in which Bitcoin is used can depend on users’ geographic location. In some countries, Bitcoin (BTC) is seen as more of a speculative asset, used for trading and investing.

In other regions, Bitcoin can serve as a vehicle of greater freedom, providing users more flexibility and faster payments, as well as an avenue out of inflationary troubles when compared to traditional finance and currency.

“Generally speaking, here in the U.S., you’ll probably still use credit cards and Venmo and things like that, but maybe you’ll want to buy some Bitcoin because it can be a way to balance your investment portfolio against the threat of inflation,” Van Valkenburgh said, subsequently referring to similarity to gold in terms of limited supply.

“So maybe, you know, as part of a balanced portfolio that includes other safer investments, you might have a little bit of Bitcoin to hedge against inflation,” he noted.

Mass adoption of blockchain tech is possible, and education is the key

May 2, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Adoption

Mainstream adoption of emerging technologies such as blockchain is inevitable, a transformation that younger generations will carry out.

Blockchain technology is one of the most promising technologies of our times, and the core concept of it is really simple. Essentially, it is a public ledger or database, and I think that public education about what blockchain actually is can be the key to its mass adoption.

Lack of knowledge and perception from the general public of the differences between blockchain technology and cryptocurrency are the major hurdles of mainstream adoption. Hollywood and the mass media still portray the industry as having a deep criminal element, associating it with the shady past of Silk Road and the darknet.

Another hurdle — which I can currently see as an insider of the cryptocurrency industry — is scalability. We have seen serious issues with both the Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum networks being throttled by excessive transactions and high transaction costs. Meanwhile, there are many chains — such as the Polkadot and Tron networks — currently addressing these issues.

Blockchain technology, business and users

From a business-to-business perspective, the main obstacles in the way of adopting blockchain technology are additional costs and a total transformation of how business is conducted, resulting in certain jobs becoming redundant. Implementing blockchain technology into a business is an expensive option: It requires additional personnel and training in specialized skills that many don’t have. I’m not sure some industries are quite ready for this yet, but in my view, implementing blockchain is effective in terms of costs and time.

From a mainstream perspective, blockchain is still something not widely understood. A good blockchain business would need to develop a real-world use case for the general public. People don’t particularly have to understand what the blockchain does. They just need to know what the outcome is and how it will benefit them!

I’m in the creative industry, so I would certainly look out for anything that has to do with media, movies and the arts. I think the beauty of blockchain is that we can utilize it for nearly everything. That does, however, potentially mean some industries will get oversaturated with the “latest, greatest ideas” based on a blockchain model.

Regardless, a startup that has a great use case for emerging technologies would definitely keep me — and other people — interested.

Decentralization and the younger generations

“Not your keys, not your coins” springs to mind here. It is essential to give people the power and authority over their own money and financial freedom. 2021 has seen a boom in decentralized exchanges like 1inch, Uniswap, JulSwap and PancakeSwap — to name a few — taking trading to a new level where you control your keys, holding them in your MetaMask wallet, Trust Wallet or SafeWallet. This gives you full power and control at all times over how they are used and spent, and how much security you have.

For me, it is essential as a safety measure to spread your crypto across several trading platforms to avoid a Mt. Gox- or QuadrigaCX-type scenario. I am forever telling traders not to keep all their eggs in one basket.

Until we educate people about the endless possibilities that emerging technologies could offer, mass adoption will be hard to achieve. That is why it is essential to bring these technologies and the knowledge about them to younger generations, where real transformations can and should be gained.

I would like to remind the young, ambitious blockchain community that a goal without a plan is just a wish, and you never fail until you stop trying. This industry is still in its infancy and is so ready for ambitious ideas to become a reality.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Lisa N. Edwards is an Elliott wave specialist trader with 20-plus years of experience in traditional stocks and commodities, now exclusively trading cryptocurrency. She runs and co-owns GettingStartedInCrypto.com, ThousandToMillions.com and The Moon Mag with Josh Taylor. Lisa is widely experienced, with previous business ventures including Satoshi Sisters, Trading Places VIP, D4.Partners and CoinRunners. Outside of trading, Lisa has a flourishing career in the media and film industries, with a cryptocurrency-themed screenplay titled “Coinrunners,” which she anticipates will be filmed in late 2021.

The new digital, decentralized economy needs academic validation

May 1, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Black sheep and white papers: In order to achieve what it promises, the crypto revolution must be led by scientists and researchers.

It is a pivotal moment in the development of the new digital economy. Interest in all things crypto keeps growing exponentially, and investment follows closely. There has arguably never been so much money poured into a product class that was so poorly understood, both by the wider public and by most investors. In lieu of actual understanding, stakeholders in the crypto space have to operate on reputation and trust instead. This necessity has given rise to a dangerous new con.

Unlike blatant scams like OneCoin or Bitconnect, today’s blockchain opportunists and confidence tricksters often play the faux science card. “Read our white paper here,” “Look at this research report we uploaded to arXiv,” “Download our dataset” — sounds legit, right? There is just one crucial element missing: academic validation.

Not all papers are created equal

Anyone can put together a “white paper” and make it available to download. In 2018, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission taught gullible crypto investors a valuable lesson. It set up a fake initial coin offering for the fictitious “HoweyCoin” that prominently featured a white paper as a token (pun intended) of trustworthiness. By contrast, only a trained researcher, most likely with a Ph.D. and extensive knowledge in the field, can have a paper published in a peer-reviewed journal. This is the gold standard to which the distributed ledger technology, or DLT, space should aspire.

You would not put a vaccine into your arm that was developed by college dropouts who did not let experts in biochemistry and immunology verify their work. So, why should you put your finances, your personal data and your automated devices into DLT solutions that were not rigorously vetted?

Academic validation starts with peer review

Peer review is a key aspect of academic validation. It describes the practice of experts in a scientific field checking each others’ research findings for flaws and inconsistencies, pre- and post-publication. On the one hand, peer review is a crucial step in academic publishing, and it increases transparency, reliability and trust. To allow for independent validation, authors open their data, methods and results to expert scrutiny, first by anonymous reviewers. On the other hand, once it passes initial review and gets published, research can be revisited, revised or even retracted at any point in time, based on new information from the wider scientific community. Academic validation is, thus, a perpetual process.

Working within a system of peer review and academic validation ensures continuity in innovation and knowledge generation. Good scientific publications embed their unique contributions into a rich legacy of previous achievements. They systematically review what has been done before, build upon it and chart the way forward for future innovation. Pseudoscience publications, by contrast, often reinvent the wheel and give it a few sharp corners for good measure.

Last but not least, peer review brings with itself a code of academic integrity and conduct. In popular culture, many supervillains hold advanced degrees. In real life, the vast majority of academics are well-intentioned, highly ethical people whose actions are guided by the pursuit of facts and knowledge. Though not a perfect antidote to human errors or moral slip-ups, we can say the academic validation system has largely succeeded in keeping scientific development on a righteous path. That observation also holds true for many industry spinoffs, such as in the biotech sector.

Biotech as the poster child for peer review in the industry

One industry where peer review has long been successfully integrated and widely accepted is biotechnology. Recent rising stars like BioNTech and Triumvira Immunologics regularly publish in top journals and stand up to painstaking peer review. Nobody would have it otherwise. The field has learned its lesson after several spectacular bouts with pseudoscience, and none of them looms larger than Theranos.

Between its founding in 2003 and its forced shutdown in 2018, blood-testing biotech unicorn Theranos amassed roughly $700 million in funding. CEO Elizabeth Holmes and chief operating officer Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani charmed investors with rosy descriptions of technologies that their company never actually developed. The two blood-testing devices Theranos brought to market — the Edison and the miniLab — were prominently not peer-reviewed.

Eventually, the pressure for validation from investors, researchers and the media became too high to ignore. Under independent scientific scrutiny, the Edison proved to be practically unusable as a diagnostic tool. Badly burned, Theranos did not even open the miniLab to independent examination. Soon enough, partners and investors cried foul, and the company’s top executives now face charges on what the SEC characterized as elaborate fraud on a massive scale.

What the whole biotech industry learned from the Theranos debacle was the inherent value of peer review and the transparency and trust that come with it. In a field that is fraught with complexity and high technology that very few truly understand, the peer review system is now a universally accepted gatekeeper. It keeps the Elizabeth Holmeses and Ramesh Balwanis the world out and makes sure innovation follows a verifiable path of truth.

It’s time to put “Ph.D.” and “DLT” together

So, why does the blockchain space not rely on peer review much more heavily? A negligibly small group among the major actors in the space care to publish their innovations academically. The field has had its fair share of Theranos-sized cons. Instead of verified fact, the promise of profit seems to be the dominant incentive to invest — a poor and possibly dangerous status quo.

Perhaps one explanation lies in the tech industry’s fascination with college dropouts — Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates and Jack Dorsey spring to mind. Yet, every innovative "dropout-preneur" stands on the shoulders of countless giants in lab coats and thick glasses. As a testament to that, keep in mind that in 2017, 30% of Google’s engineers held a doctorate, and Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter each hired a majority of university graduates, too.

We are building an all-new digital economy here. Our current system would be unthinkable without sound academic processes with knowledge at its heart. Think of contributions of John Hicks and Kenneth Arrow to economic equilibrium theory, analyses of trade theory by Paul Krugman, or insights of Ronald Coase into transaction costs and property rights. They are merely a few among other Nobel laureates and many, many more rank-and-file researchers whose collective efforts have shaped the global economic system as we know it. The new digital economy deserves — nay, requires — the same amount of academic rigor.

The crypto revolution is driven by “rockstars,” visionaries who often lack an academic background. Their ideas of decentralization and openness are refreshingly anti-systemic and optimistic. Still, these visions are only possible thanks to the work of generations of scientists who laid down the foundations of current crypto protocols decades ago, and continue developing them today. The shape and form that the crypto revolution takes will be the product of dreams and ideologies on the one hand, and peer-reviewed research and development on the other — in equal measure.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Serguei Popov acquired his doctorate in mathematics from Moscow State University in 1997, and has held research and teaching positions at the University of Sao Paulo and the University of Campinas. Currently, he is a senior researcher at the University of Porto. His interest in crypto dates back to 2013 when he started applying his knowledge in general mathematics, probability and stochastic processes to distributed ledger technology. He is a co-founder of the Iota Foundation and member of the board of directors.

The opinions expressed are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University or its affiliates.

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