Since its creation, cryptocurrency has exploded in popularity, with market leader Bitcoin grow by 193,639% between 2012 and 2020. Other cryptocurrencies have followed this pathway, with the global blockchain market predicted to reach $23.3 billion by 2023.
Yet, despite the huge uptake from across the globe, many people are still held back from investing in cryptocurrency. As it’s an unknown asset, many people shy away from it, not understanding how it works and sticking with more established forms of investment.
In this article, we’ll be diving into the fears that people have around cryptocurrency and pointing to the innovative solutions that major cryptocurrency investing platforms have come up with to overcome these barriers.
What Prevents People from Getting into Cryptocurrency?
A 2021 report by Gemini took a survey of investors in crypto and crypto-curious individuals from around the United States. Its results revealed a range of insights about cryptocurrency, its investor pool, and the common challenges that people face when deciding to invest in this asset class.
While cryptocurrency uptake is still relatively low, the number of Americans that are turning to crypto is increasing every single year. Roughly 20% of adult Americans that were surveyed said that they are somewhat likely to buy crypto in the next year.
Yet, 20% is still fairly low, leaving 80% of Americans more towards the unlikely or very unlikely side. Taking a look at this, there is a range of different reasons that people cite as what holds them back from cryptocurrency. Some of the top concerns that are routinely listed are:
- I don’t know enough about it
- I’ve never heard of it
- I don’t think my money would be safe
Reducing these concerns into single words, we can summarize them into three distinct problems: education, awareness, and security.
Alongside looking at how these problems come about and how they impact the community, we’ll also be looking at distinct strategies employed by major cryptocurrency platforms in order to counter these barriers.
Education and Knowledge
Education is a central factor that stops people from investing in cryptocurrency, simply not knowing what they can do with it, what it is, what it’s for, and how it works. Even within investors, over 33% of cryptocurrency investors state that they know little to nothing about it. Although this is slightly funny, it’s also worrying, with a lack of knowledge being a huge barrier to entry for cryptocurrency.
What are cryptocurrency platforms doing about the knowledge barrier?
Raising the general knowledge base of a whole population is no easy feat, especially when the central concept (cryptocurrency) is firmly rooted in digital literacy. To overcome this barrier, cryptocurrency platforms have developed two potential approaches. One of these is social trading, and the other is launching educational modules.
Let’s break these down further.
NAGAX and Social Trading
The social investing trading platform, NAGAX has turned to social trading to get around the knowledge barrier that is required to enter cryptocurrency. Social trading is the act of copying other people’s trades, ensuring that you can piggyback off someone else’s knowledge and execute cryptocurrency trades.
Within the NAGAX ecosystem, users are able to pay a small fee in order to “copy” someone else’s trades. The person they’re copying then receives a commission off this fee, ensuring that there are benefits for both new and experienced traders.
Social trading eliminates the knowledge barrier as users no longer have to do extensive research before getting into cryptocurrency. The power of NAGAX’s social trading is that they incentivize this follower relationship, allowing experienced traders to gain while inexperienced traders can follow the trades of someone with more knowledge.
Equally, this terms cryptocurrency trading into a completely passive form of income for those that follow the trades, further demonstrating the potential impact that this innovative feature has.
Binance and Educational Modules
Instead of providing a solution that skirts around the knowledge barrier that plagues cryptocurrency, many platforms are turning to educational modules in order to push through it all together. While the previously mentioned NAGAX also has a range of educational modules, Binance Academy is by far the most well-known of these systems.
Binance Academy is a free online platform where users that want to know more about cryptocurrency can watch short videos that walk through certain parts of cryptocurrency. Going beyond just currency, things like crypto payments, concepts like proof of attendance protocol, and crypto lending are all explained.
These comprehensive educational support systems help push back against the lack of understanding that surrounds cryptocurrency and blockchain as a whole. As more people begin to take these free educational courses, which are incredibly accessible, users will be able to increase their own knowledge and get to grips with crypto.
Cryptocurrency Awareness
Another commonly cited problem is simply that a person has simply never heard of cryptocurrency. For those of us that work online, this might be a shocking idea, considering that blockchain and cryptocurrency seem to be showing up in headlines more and more, but this isn’t a shared sentiment, with 13% of Americans having never heard the word.
One of the leading ways that large crypto platforms are turning the tides on the remaining percentage of people that are unfamiliar with their systems is by moving to mainstream advertising campaigns. For a long time, blockchain-related advertisements were banned on major platforms.
This came after a range of ICO scams back in 2019, leading to Facebook and Twitter banning cryptocurrency from appearing in advertisements. Yet, lots has changed since 2019, with these bans eventually becoming repealed.
In fact, cryptocurrency advertisements have recently reached a huge audience of 112.3 million viewers, launching an ad at the 2022 Super Bowl. Coinbase released an advertisement that went live at the Superbowl, generating over 20 million individual hits in one minute.
The increasing online presence and expanding advertising presence of cryptocurrency platforms is one of the key ways that they are driving more people to hear about and take an interest in cryptocurrency.
Security
Another reason that people are afraid to invest in cryptocurrency is the fact that it is frequently the target of cyberattacks and cybercrime, with millions of dollars in cryptocurrency being stolen from the platforms. To attempt to reduce the amount of cybercrime that’s directly related to cryptocurrency, platforms like Crypto.com have industry-leading security.
There are several different ways that Crypto.com ensures that its users have a safe experience when trading and storing cryptocurrency. First of all, all of user cryptocurrencies are held offline. By making a partnership with Leder, which has institutional-grade custody, this platform ensures that this stored coin is impervious to physical damage, cybercrime theft, or destruction.
Additionally, different security features like MFA, Secure Software Development Lifecycles, Withdrawal Protection, and 24/7 Customer Support ensure that.
On top of this, Crypto.com has a Hacker One Bug Bounty, which is a scheme where hackers can try and penetrate into Crypto.com to find bugs. If they find an exploit and report it to the site, they get a huge reward, creating an incentive for ethical hacking that helps to continually improve the site’s security.
With advanced security practices being incorporated across all major cryptocurrency trading platforms, this worry is quickly becoming a thing of the past.
Final Thoughts
While there is still a range of barriers to entry that are preventing users from investing in cryptocurrency, large crypto platforms are actively moving to break down these barriers. From the social trading of NAGAX to the security of Crypto.com, platforms are taking innovative new strides to ensure that they’re welcoming new members on board.
If you’re looking to get into cryptocurrency, then make the most of these features, and you’ll be a great deal more confident investing that very first dollar.
