The Crypto Industry Is Still Waiting For Its 'iPhone Moment'

This year, a huge crypto cycle unfolded with all-time highs, fanaticism, and mainstream media lip service to crypto trends. However, the uncomfortable truth is that cryptocurrencies are no more prevalent in most people's everyday lives than they were in 2017. Four years on, what's holding it back?

In 2017, I joined Crypto.com (then called Monaco) as Chief Marketing Officer, which marked my first foray into the blockchain space. The company has grown to become one of the world's largest crypto service providers and fiat-to-crypto exchange gateways.

During that time, the crypto space has changed. The focus on payments has been greatly reduced, and many projects aiming to adopt cryptocurrencies have been sidelined. Decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have taken the spotlight, but they’re ultimately focused on crypto exchanges and can’t help the real world in any meaningful way — at least for now.

The situation reminds me of the mobile industry before the iPhone and the revolution led by Steve Jobs. Technology and features stack up, but with no additional impact on the end user, despite all the buzz.

As a pioneer in mobile marketing, I have worked for the Mobile Marketing Association in Asia for over a decade (chaired from 2009-2010) and have seen the industry evolve firsthand. One misconception about this revolution is that Apple didn't "invent" the smartphone in any sense.

Going from zero to hero with just one innovation

If you asked someone on the street what made the iPhone so successful, you'd get at least half a dozen different answers. Some say, it's apps and the App Store. For others, it's Gorilla Glass and touchscreens. It's 3G (actually, the first iPhone didn't even have 3G), Wi-Fi connectivity, cameras, decent size, sleek design...

Of course, all of these factors played a role. But come to think of it, all of these features already exist in other phones in some form. Nokia has Symbian OS, which has a very rich application ecosystem. The same goes for the BlackBerry, which at the time was very advanced in terms of both hardware and software - for example, in 2005 it released the BBM - the prototype for WhatsApp/iMessages. Palm and many other companies were making "pocket computers" with stylus touchscreens. Nokia was great with camera phones and IME, Motorola wowed everyone with its Razr design, and so on.

The only independent innovation brought by the iPhone is the user experience (UX), more specifically, the multi-touch capacitive screen. It introduced gestures, an on-screen QWERTY keyboard, and the basic smartphone design we know today, but the rest of the iPhone itself was nothing new. As Steve Jobs said at the time: "An iPod, a cell phone, and an Internet communicator...not three separate devices. It's one device."—offering an easy-to-use, sleek and beautiful , fully functional equipment. The rest, as they say, is history.

Crypto has yet to have its iPhone moment.

Reshaping cryptocurrency as a means, not an end

We need to recognize the utilitarian considerations of ordinary people when we speak of cryptocurrency adoption. The vast majority of people consider cost and utility before considering any idealistic issues. Organic food has its place, but it's only a niche market - most people buy food based on its taste and price. Electric cars have struggled because they have a plethora of practical flaws and are often far more expensive.

Positioning cryptocurrencies as magical tools for financial freedom and decentralization rings hollow to most. By far the biggest reason people are getting into crypto right now is the price increase, not its utility. Cryptocurrencies are useful in certain applications, such as low-cost global value transfers. But using cryptocurrencies for payments has a number of practical disadvantages, mostly related to integration with existing financial rails. Frankly, the user experience with crypto payments is terrible — complicated fees, confirmation times, and cumbersome units add to the pain of adoption.

There's no perfect analogy, but I think cryptocurrency's "multi-touch capacitive screen" is reinventing it as a means, not an end. Ordinary people don't care about cryptocurrency itself, they care about what it will bring them. If you promise them Lamborghinis and moons, they'll listen to you, but only so far.

If you use cryptocurrencies to cut out the middle man between you and your funds, offering (nearly) free money transfers, foreign exchange transactions, interest rates that normal people can only pay but not earn, and other things that make black card holders jealous Good thing, so what?

You can bet the average person will be interested.

This is the strategy we employ: a redeemable membership fee that gives us access to a range of useful financial, travel and lifestyle services easily accessible from mobile and web apps, or even chats like WhatsApp or Telegram obtained from the service. We act on two fronts: remove any friction from using our product, and make it great for everyone. Just like the iPhone back then.

Of course, there is still a long way to go. But if more crypto projects "think outside the box" and focus on utility rather than just speculation, it could put us back on the path to mainstream adoption that began in 2017.

Cointelegraph Chinese is a blockchain news information platform, and the information provided only represents the author's personal opinion, has nothing to do with the position of the Cointelegraph Chinese platform, and does not constitute any investment and financial advice. Readers are requested to establish correct currency concepts and investment concepts, and earnestly raise risk awareness.