Web3 enthusiasts need to lead “crypto and blockchain education” to insure its future
Nayib Bukele has been re-elected president of El Salvador and everyone seems to be singing bitcoin praises, and some suggesting that it's in fact, the reason behind his re-election.
While I find that pretty cute, the numbers when it comes to the impact Bitcoin is having in El Salvador paints an important picture.
First off, I applaud what Nayib has done in El Salvador and obviously his bitcoin movement that isn't very pleasing to the IMF, and major US Media houses.
That said, how bitcoin has been adopted in El Salvador shows us what we need to do moving forward.
Crypto will have no value whatsoever if it all just eventually becomes an asset class under regulated custodians like the banks and exchangers.
To look at numbers, Nayib’s re-election may have more to do with his role in reducing crime in the country than Bitcoin.
According to an annual survey by José Simeón Cañas Central American University in El Salvador, 12% of the local population used Bitcoin
BTC at least once to pay for goods and services in 2023.
The number of those who feel their family’s life improved during the past year, with Bitcoin being legal tender, has risen from 3% in 2022 to 6.8% in 2023. However, more than a third of respondents (34.3%) believe that the overall economic situation in the country improved in 2023, primarily due to the decline in crime (24.3%). Only 0.5% of Salvadorans think Bitcoin has anything to do with the economy’s improvement.
I for one very much dismissed the idea that Bukele’s relection had anything to do with Bitcoin, and definitely did not think El Salvador’s adoption of it had much of an impact.
But that's the thing, when talking about impact, it's often easy to look at personal expectations and dismiss things without looking at various ways an impact could have been experienced.
While number-wise, it failed. It did piss off the IMF, and I personally love that.
It got the media talking, basically free marketing there.
But you see, this is where the problem is, quite a lot of people have heard of bitcoin but very view understand it from the right angle.
Education Is How We Secure Our Future
The media has already made a lot of people hate Bitcoin, Crypto generally, NFTs, AI, Web3 and so much more.
So while we earned exposure, majority of that was negative publicity.
Now, Blackrock is in the picture and major investment firms are crawling in, what do we think is going to happen?
It's rather simply, the Media is obligated to preach “government security” when it comes to crypto. This means, going forward, crypto may receive praises for what it's doing, but most will just sum up their content with promoting “regulated custodians” as a “safe” way to invest in crypto, thereby diminishing the impact it should have.
Instead of buying bitcoin, people will buy bitcoin ETFs. Instead of buying Ethereum or Solana, they'd buy their ETFs. Each booming crypto blockchain will have its native token as ETFs, so if the world is getting crypto education from this same system, they best believe that ETFs will be the route majority of the investments will flow.
As web3 enthusiasts, we ought to move in and offer the right education to the public. Surely it's not going to be easy selling crypto to anyone, that's why we shouldn't try to sell it as a tech, but as a product and at the same time, lecture people on “self-custody” to insure our future.
If ETFs become the channel crypto receives retail investments, then the entire industry will be heavily centralized.
There's a large tech-illiterate population that needs to get the right education.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha