Why Monero Merchant Adoption Is So Hard

It is demoralizing to see how little crypto adoption has improved. We seem to be stuck in diminishing returns with Bitcoin and I don't see any ground gained on BTC because we aren't breaking the adoption hurdles. The shamelist was great and (I admittedly have not spent much time on it) it hasn't amounted to nothing except a few volunteers sending emails and now the chat is dead. It is hard getting people excited during a bear market but that is the reality.
So yeah, giftcards through a third party willing to take cryoto are probably our best bet for native adoption. The reasons listed here, especially with ux for merchants and customers, is extremely hard to overcome. And worse, stable coin credit cards are going to beat us to the punch.

@xenu Cold hard truth, I can't deny that too. On the artist sphere too there are many people struggling to get paid commission because their country don't allow paypal. There are people that suggesting crypto to them but they seems to ignore the suggestion. Yet I know some people that work on creative industry accept USDT. People just want things to be stupid simple but unfortunately the volatility and the lack of platform that brave enough to lead the industry really hurt the adoption.

I'd say the current situation of Monero is really similar to how linux adoption rate years ago. People always say it's the best operating system than windows yet nobody using it. Theoritically it's true that it is better than windows but you need the technical know how to do it. If not because Steam helping the development of proton to lure gamers to try Linux, the OS might still not going anywhere with its adoption rate. But with Monero it's double the difficulty because crypto name already tainted by scammers so people really cautious when someone suggest it.

@xenu Way before Monerica, in like 2014, there were efforts to onboard crypto merchants in SF and larger companies and that made it really obvious even back then that mass adoption was fantasy. The introduction of things like Apple Pay, which took like a decade to roll out in the US, made it seem like digitial payments could work and all crypto had to do was plug into that interface. But that still han't happened and it really just comes down to speed.

Crypto is a settlement layer first and a transaction layer second. But it's unique in that it's both. The side effect of that is it's slow. That just doesn't work for a lot of situations. There are constant attempts with other blockchains to have the transaction layer be faster, like with Kaspa, but there's no privacy there and that's a whole other story.

Crypto does work for some things well: onchain trading, web hosting, gift & prepaid cards, VPNs, phone plans, AI, some gambling. But will it overtake all forms of payment? No. Credit cards protect consumers and are idiot proof, lightning fast and offer reward points. Maybe crypto is also good for someone fleeing some 3rd world country too.

So there is a hybrid model of cypto as the good money and credit cards sit on top of it, you can see that with these Bitcoin cards.

Maybe AI agents paying each other could be a use case? That's unclear.

Crypto will likely be niche for payments and the majority case will be as an investment, and most of that will be custodial. There's no way to force people to think differently, the market has already spoken. Now, of course more innovation could come along but as it stands, this is the reality.

@sepia True, but Linux has gained a lot of traction and currently using Zorin OS, a lot of the annoying driver issues that make Linux a total turn off have not been the case.

The Linux ecosystem is too elistist and fragmented. Everyone taking so much pride in their obscure OS version and hardware drivers suffer from that. It's a very toxic environment.

It really takes an entire generation of young people with no financial or technical investment to start a change like Linux being a dominate OS. And let's be clear the Microsoft knows this game well and puts their OS and software in classrooms and in universities for this reason. All the big tech companies understand that to maintain their control they must indoctrinate the youth. Linux has practically no marketing budget.

Not gonna read an AI generated article even though I want to hear Monerica's perspective.

@Stylus1063 The way content is made is: come up with an idea or find a topic people search for, then give all the context and background and knowledge known about it, and direct the AI to write it. Yeah, some people are not going to want to read it since it's structured in a certain way but it's way too much effort to manually type out every character only to make the exact same points but sound a bit different. So, if you don't want to read it, alright but all the same points are true.

Maybe a video would be made that's on a topic people really care about but it's again just way too taxing to produce content 100% manually to appeal to like 5% of people.

@monerica Would you share the prompt?

@Stylus1063 It's not a single prompt.

Do you guys know who Molly White is?

https://www.mollywhite.net/

I research and write critically about the cryptocurrency industry and technology more broadly in my independent publication, Citation Needed. I regularly appear in media, speak at major conferences including South By Southwest and Web Summit; guest lecture at universities including Harvard, MIT, and Stanford; and advise policymakers and regulators globally. I have bylines in The New York Times, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and Bloomberg Businessweek.

I also run the websites Web3 is Going Just Great, where I highlight examples of how cryptocurrencies, web3 projects, and the industry surrounding them are failing to live up to their promises, and Follow the Crypto, where I track cryptocurrency industry spending in United States elections.

My criticism of the cryptocurrency and technology industries stems from a deeper conviction: that technology should serve human needs rather than mere profits. This belief has shaped my life and career, from my work as a professional software engineer to my more than fifteen-year role as an active Wikipedian (as GorillaWarfare), where I serve as an administrator and functionary, and previously served three terms on the Arbitration Committee. I care deeply about free and open access to high-quality information, and view projects like Wikipedia as critical infrastructure. I spend a lot of time thinking about how to make a better, more human-centered web, and am a passionate advocate for free and open access, digital sovereignty, and ethical technology.

She runs a site called https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/ - it has a satrical feelz to it as every article she has on that site shows web3 not doing great....in fact with all the scams, exploits, hax, web3 getting shafted hard from all avenues.

Anyways she wrote a very good article on the empty promises of web3 via her other page on her main site...

https://blog.mollywhite.net/blockchain/

The blockchain collection
by Molly White on Sunday, January 9, 2022

Until mid-2021 or so, my feelings towards blockchains and cryptocurrency were ones of apathy and mild annoyance. I have been apathetic towards and mildly annoyed by many things—Bluetooth headphones, most “smart home” devices—and have found my general well-being is best served by just ignoring them and moving on with my life. Pick my battles, right? But I do try to balance my curmudgeonliness with a willingness to revisit my opinions, and some periodic reevaluations of my stances have resulted in change—in fact, I now have a pair of Bluetooth headphones that I use daily and quite like (despite my continued annoyance that I can’t use them while they’re charging, and their propensity to try to connect to any device besides the one I am using).

It was such a reevaluation that led me to shift my stance on blockchains and cryptocurrency. I had been hearing more and more about blockchains, cryptocurrencies, and some “web3” thing in conversations with friends, various technology spaces, the news… well, kind of everywhere. I knew my information and therefore my opinions were outdated and incomplete, so I did some research. As with Bluetooth headphones, my opinion changed. But instead of going from apathy to acceptance, I have instead come to believe that these technologies are so harmful that I cannot ethically continue to ignore them, and must instead do my best to educate and advocate against their wider adoption. I am picking my battles, and this is one of them.

This is the essay to read: https://blog.mollywhite.net/blockchains-are-not-what-they-say/

I know we're talkin about XMR, so let's take it up a notch.

XMR adoption isn't going so well even after more than a decade, because people haven't got their priorities straight. They don't understand why web3 was built, they don't understand why we need to get away from the Rothschild banking empire (they barely know of such)...also people are afraid of what XMR represents....that it may brand those as dissidents and criminals (meaning they want to play it safe and stay legal, not knowing the entire legal system operates just as the fiat economy does..."by decree"/"Fiat" ...meaning today you may be considered a good legal rule abiding citizen...the next day you're branding a criminal according to their whims).

Decentralized financing became stocks, shares, investmentings rather than building a world of free trade and financial sovereignty (thanks to the CIA who invented BTC, and the private bankers who were the same families that created the Fiat-economy via their channels of Blackrock and Vanguard usurping not only the philosophy of Cryptocurrency....from people power to now playing right back into the Wall Street Matrix).

We have a lot of work to do!

@BraveSmoke It's not just an education problem, think about the pure convenience of a credit card. You lose it? Cancel it. Your brain doesn't work? Just give the card/ tap it. Want to buy something online? Type some digits. Want a reason to use it? Buy now, pay later, get points. Instant payment, accepted everywhere.

Contrast that with crypto and it's pretty clear why crypto is niche.