Even though Bitcoin’s market has been struggling recently, its market cap is still over $390 billion, which shows that people are becoming more interested in the asset class. But the industry can learn a lot from the rush of small investors at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. With the recent Luna crash giving crypto some bad press, it’s more important than ever for the industry to be more open than ever to reach its lofty goals of decentralisation and bring more HODLers into the fold.
But crypto entry barriers stop a lot of these people who might be interested. It’s hard to get into the crypto space if you don’t know much about the crypto ecosystem and don’t know what you need to know to start trading in the space. But what can be done to make crypto easier to use? The answer to this question is important for the industry to survive what could become a crypto winter.
Getting normal people to be able to invest
The boom after the pandemic made it possible for a new wave of investors to use online brokers. According to the FINRA Consumer Insights: Money & Investing 2021 report, one of the main reasons why people started investing at this time was because they could make smaller investments. For example, Robinhood, a platform that lets new traders test the waters of the stock market, grew by leaps and bounds during the pandemic. As of May 2022, it had around 31 million verified users.
In addition to letting people trade small amounts of money, Robinhood’s easy-to-use platform made investing less scary for younger people and was a great way for people to start a crypto portfolio with their spare change. Robinhood’s platform lets you trade cryptocurrencies with low fees, but it only works with taxable brokerage accounts and doesn’t have any fixed-income investments.
But other crypto trading platforms, like Coinbase, that offer more crypto options have their own problems to work out, mostly with a UX that seems hard to use. Artkai, a global digital product design and development team, did a study with more than 30 blockchain-related projects. They found that the UX design of most crypto platforms was too complicated for people who don’t know much about crypto and tech.
The crypto space needs to think strategically if it wants to be open to new people. Combining Robinhood’s easy-to-use interface and Coinbase’s many ways to trade crypto could make it easier for new people to get involved in the space.
How to Learn Crypto
But fixing the UX problem is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to some of the problems crypto newbies face. A study done by CES Tech found that 29% of people who have never bought cryptocurrency say they don’t because they don’t know what to do with it. Three years ago, that would have been a given. But developers should be worried about the fact that more than a quarter of investors don’t even know what to do with the new assets. This is especially true given that the latest bull run has made it clear that digital assets are becoming more mainstream.
It’s important to teach people how and what they can do with their crypto assets if they want crypto to become more popular. Digital payments have moved into a new era where many people live with cryptocurrencies and digital assets, but there are still people who don’t know what’s going on. Just like credit cards didn’t start being used right away, a new type of digital asset needs time to become common. A bill signed in Georgia last year is a great example of how teaching about currency in high schools helps educate the public about crypto.
But the fact that there are so many crypto scams is a much bigger problem. Normal people don’t get into the crypto market because of scams and security problems, which is a good thing. Before investors can even start small, they need to know what they are getting into and have a basic understanding of what crypto is and what to watch out for.
By making apps or other educational materials, you can teach people how to spot a scam and teach the public what to watch out for when investing. Along with this, making wallets that are easy for regular people to use will push them to join the crypto world. Then, hopefully, the market will be able to bounce back and even do well during the next bull cycle.
