Crypto is one of the most interesting and emotionally challenging industries to work in. I’ve been working in crypto full-time for just two and a half years. Even this short amount of time has been enough for me to see how society reacts to people working in the blockchain sphere.
How people's opinions have changed while I was working in crypto:
In 2021 – "Wow, you work in crypto? Can you explain NFTs to me?"
In 2022 – "Oh, you work in crypto? My buddy bought five 'donkey JPEGs' and lost all his money."
In 2023 – "I’ve heard crypto is dead, isn't it?"
December 2023 – "You work in crypto? Awesome! Should I buy this Solano thing?
That seems like a rollercoaster because the attention of wide communities changes tremendously based on crypto prices.
When crypto achieves product-market fit, people who were skeptical and criticized it start to take new products for granted. And the funny thing is, they may not even realize there's a blockchain running under the hood.
We can see it with stablecoins, which are used by many non-crypto people. Btw, many of these people don't even use a wallet. They just go to some offline P2P exchange, give cash to an employee and they send cheap TRC20 USDT to some wallet.
I think we can see the same with NFTs and crypto games. Olaf Carlson Wee was asked on one of the podcasts, 'What is obvious to him?' He said we'll see high-quality games with crypto-economic incentives that will grow faster than anything the world has ever seen. He said this before ChatGPT launched, so it would be hard to compete with that growth, but I believe we need just one game that changes everything. Then, communities that were skeptical about blockchain will simply play these games and have fun.
Builders shouldn’t be sensitive to what non-crypto people say. To be honest, skepticism is understandable. Blockchain products are not easy to use, we've seen a lot of scams, new UX patterns, and constant FOMO.
Today people trust in crypto, tomorrow they may not, but the day after tomorrow it will become a part of their lives.