SINCE Satoshi Nakamoto released “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” the white paper describing the theoretical underpinnings of the cryptocurrency in 2008, pundits have pronounced Bitcoin dead at almost every stage of its journey. 99Bitcoins even maintains a full list of these Bitcoin obituaries, going as far back as December 2010 (“Why Bitcoin can’t be a currency”) and continuing to the most recent as of this writing (“With the Con That’s Bitcoin, There’s No There There.”)
Bitcoin is here to stay. So, too, is cryptocurrency. That so many authors have framed Bitcoin as moribund technology - even as it grows or rebounds - points to a broader misunderstanding of what it will take for it to succeed, apparent even in the analysis of people who so clearly want it to.
Case in point: Hundreds of writers have also described how Filipino workers overseas would one day turn to Bitcoin to send remittances to loved ones back home because it enables them to do so cheaper, quicker, and more conveniently than legacy solutions like wire transfer services. But this day has not come. Western Union and its peers are still a fixture in developed countries where overseas workers send remittances from and in emerging markets where their relatives receive them. No wire transfer operator is boarding up their business, as so many writers bullish on Bitcoin would have you believe.
How people pick up tech
Both of these misleading narratives - Bitcoin as a currency failure, and Bitcoin as a remittances savior - originate from the same false premise: users who genuinely see the value in the cryptocurrency would use its most advanced applications from the get-go. When they do not, skeptics present it as evidence that Bitcoin is bound to die. When there is some indication that a handful of users are, advocates present it as evidence that Bitcoin will change the entire remittances landscape.
But this is not how tech adoption works. Most people do not jump straight into the deep end and try to swim; they dip their toes in first to test the water and then slowly enter as they get more comfortable. You can see this principle at work when digital immigrants try out the internet for the first time. They do not fire up a browser and immediately begin trading stocks on a newly opened E-Trade account. Instead, they first master basic skills that most digital natives take for granted, such as searching, navigating, and browsing, before they move onto more advanced applications like emailing and social networking, which are themselves precursors for even more complex domains like ecommerce and financial technology. Adoption, in other words, occurs on a continuum and has a learning curve, one intrinsically tied to our confidence: The better we become in a particular area, the more confident we become in trying its more complex functions and tasks.
The same learning curve also applies to Bitcoin in the Philippines.
If we want to see cryptocurrency transform our financial landscape as many of us believe it can, more cryptocurrency companies need to be similarly conscious of their product or service’s learning curve, even if it comes down to simple steps like creating easily understandable signage or giving consumers non-technical explanations.