Half of every conversation I have with people new to crypto consists of a language lesson.<\/p>\n
I majored in French in college. (Oui, French. Yes, now I\u2019m in product management. Yes, in crypto. No, I do not know how to code.) My major rarely feels relevant in my current field. I work with one native French speaker, but I\u2019m so rusty that I\u2019d be embarrassed to attempt to carry on a conversation about wine, much less deterministic wallets or Merkle trees.<\/p>\n
Yet it occurred to me today, as I was turning the internet upside down looking for some actual, substantiated research on UX tactics for teaching people about new technologies, that I may be ignoring an important lesson from the French classroom: begin by creating a little lexicon of a few words and phrases, then build on it.<\/p>\n
Easier said than done in a space where we are upending the status quo, not just within the technology world but within the finance world as well \u2014 but let\u2019s give it a try.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start at the very beginning.<\/p>\n
Blockchain<\/strong><\/p>\n We say \u2018blockchains\u2019 are ledgers. Fine. This is an easy leap for most people to make.<\/p>\n Cryptocurrency<\/strong><\/p>\n Stop right here. With this single word, we are introducing this revolutionary new concept that took arguably some of the smartest technologists in the world to figure out and deploy. The term \u2018crypto\u2019 cannot be easily translated into an accurate analogy the way the term \u2018blockchain\u2019 can. \u2018Digital Money\u2019 or Satoshi\u2019s original \u2018Electronic Cash\u2019 are so much more relatable to the average human.<\/p>\n Wallet<\/strong><\/p>\n Don\u2019t get me started on this misnomer. The properties of the physical version of a wallet just don\u2019t translate. I have one wallet, into which I put credit cards, cash, and my driver\u2019s license. Most of us don\u2019t have multiple wallets, nor do we have any kind of securing mechanism for our physical wallets. This analogy just doesn\u2019t work. I think we also need to differentiate between software and hardware wallets, since the experiences are so different. What about the following:<\/p>\n For software wallets: \u2018Account\u2019<\/p>\n For hardware wallets: \u2018Vault\u2019<\/p>\n Mnemonic phrase \/ seed \/ passphrase \/ etc.<\/strong><\/p>\n Nope nope nope. What about, \u2018Word Key\u2019?<\/p>\n Multi-signature<\/strong><\/p>\n Shared? Joint?<\/p>\n I would argue that almost all other crypto terms could likely be abstracted away from novice users\u2019 eyes. A lot of folks still don\u2019t trust crypto, but trust will not come from them reading the Bitcoin white paper. It will come through social validation \u2014 seeing friends use cryptocurrencies without negative consequences. The more barriers we can break down to enable this \u2014 including language barriers \u2014 the faster we\u2019ll see adoption.<\/p>\n What do you think?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Half of every conversation I have with people new to crypto consists of a language lesson. I majored in French in college. (Oui, French. Yes, now I\u2019m in product management. Yes, in crypto. No, I do not know how to code.) My major rarely feels relevant in my current field. I work with one native…","protected":false},"author":53,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[290],"tags":[237,225,222,278,279],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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