Younger people are supposed to be more conversant with new technologies, right? They’re active, hungry for information, smart, and always thinking about the future, right? Well, maybe we need to update our cliches with more current information. Let us explain to you why.
A Youtuber content producer recently visited a college in the US. We don’t know which college he chose (which is a good thing). He engaged many of the institution’s students in a conversation and asked them a question: if I could give you right now a dollar or a Bitcoin, which one would you accept?
The most frequent answer was, overwhelmingly, the dollar.
Are you surprised? Don’t be.
After hearing the students’ answers, it turned out that most of those who turned the Bitcoin down had no idea of what it is. A few of them had heard the term mentioned in the news every now and then, but they don’t know what it is and they don’t understand at all how it works.
So they’re not cryptonauts, is that such a bad thing? Of course not. The worrisome part is that their answers reveal they don’t understand fiat currencies either. They don’t know that inflation exists and that it changes the value in a USD banknote even if the ink in the paper remains the same.
Answers like “You can’t lose a dollar” were common. Also, “It’s almost enough for a Reese’s” or something with the same underlying notion. But our favorite answer was “Bitcoin? Isn’t it like a guy in a cage in Antartica? Doesn’t he run Bitcoin?”
Only a couple of the students went for Bitcoin because they knew at least something about it and they knew that it was worth around USD 5k at the time. Unfortunately, neither of them owns a Bitcoin wallet (mobile or otherwise), so they would have been unable to receive the token anyway.
Some of them changed their minds once they heard the basics about Bitcoin and its current price, but even with extra information available some still declined because they didn’t want to bother with passwords and things of the sort. Don’t they use email?
What could we make of this? Well, if we knew what college this was, our first instinct would be never to hire any of its graduates (maybe just one or two).
But what this really shows is that the crypto verse is still very far away from the mainstream’s mind. It remains a marginal market with marginal activity in which most of the participants are people with a high degree of familiarity with digital technologies. Let’s face it: crypto is a geeky club for mature people.
The crypto world has been around for a decade already, but the reality is that it is barely getting started. That’s the only sensible conclusion we can draw from this episode.
The cryptosphere’s residents can’t wait for market capitalization to reach trillions, for prices to become stable, for Bitcoin and other currencies to become as readily usable as their local legal tender. In other words, we want for cryptocurrencies to deliver on their goals yesterday. But we’re forgetting that crypto remains mainly unknown in the streets and thoroughly misunderstood by the few who have a casual understanding.
So, we’ll have to be patient. The crypto-revolution is coming. Just not this week. And not in that college.
Disclaimer: The presented information is subjected to market condition and may include the very own opinion of the author. Please do your ‘very own’ market research before making any investment in cryptocurrencies. Neither the writer nor the publication (TronWeekly.com) holds any responsibility for your financial loss.