Mary is a grandmother. Her grandkids love speaking about Bitcoin and Ethereum, but Mary has no interest in cryptocurrencies at all. Which will be the first cryptocurrency she will use?
I am a big fan of cryptocurrencies, but I do not like the ones that I do not understand. There are so many descriptions describing the different cryptocurrencies that make me blink my eyes and wonder what I just read. It is simply hard to understand, even if you read and write about cryptocurrencies regularly. But, there is one question I ask myself regularly… which will be the cryptocurrency that makes the normal guy not interested in cryptocurrencies buy cryptos for the first time?
Let us imagine a grandmother named Mary. Her grandchildren speak about lambos all the time, and they say that blockchain, Bitcoin, and the other cryptocurrencies will moon… soon! Mary is happy about it, but she has no interest in cryptocurrencies. She would never open an exchange account, and she would never buy something for the purpose of hodling.
When will Mary feel “forced” to buy a cryptocurrency for the first time? When will she see a product that she really wants, but to get it, a cryptocurrency is needed?
I keep asking myself this question, and I do have some ideas!
This will make grandmother use cryptos!
Grandmother will not by cryptos for the purpose of buying them. She will buy them because there is a product on the other side. She will not by Ethereum, she will not by Bitcoin, and she will not buy Litecoin. These are all useful, but she doesn’t need them. But, do you know what’s up with Mary?
Mary likes traveling!
She likes traveling, and she wants to live in a nice hotel! For a long time she has used Trivago to find the cheapest hotels room out there, but there is a rumor saying that there is a platform named LockTrip which will let you buy hotel rooms 10%-30% cheaper than the cheapest options at Trivago.
Mary visits the LockTrip website and she discovers that it is true… the hotel rooms are cheaper indeed. At the site, she can see the price for a room is 100USD per night, which is equal to 123 LOC. Who cares about LOC, but Mary really wants to book the room. In order to, she starts the booking process, and at the end of the process, she will pay 100 USD for the room. The reality is that the 100 USD is used to buy LOC tokens from an exchange at market price, and then used to pay for the hotel room, but Mary doesn’t care, she just wants the cheap hotel room! She has just used a cryptocurrency to pay for the first time in her life, simply because she wanted a nice hotel room in Barcelona with view to the Sagrada Familia.
- Mary doesn’t care about this, but you can now sign up for the LockTrip airdrop to get 10USD worth of LOC tokens.
Mary misses her favorite TV show
Mary doesn’t just like to travel, she likes to watch TV. She has a holiday home on the coastline of Spain (near Barcelona), and there she spends her winter to escape from the cold in the northern parts of Europe. But, she is just about to discover that she cannot watch her favorite TV show in Sweden, because it is geo-blocked. She has read about VPN services and how they can be used, but she has also heard about a service named IPSX. This functions in the same way as a VPN, in many ways, but it is cheaper. There is a Dollar price for the service, but in the background, the Dollars is converted to IPSX tokens, which again is used to pay for the actual service. Mary has just bought crypto-tokens for the second time, simply to save money!
As Mary read about the IPSX service she also discovered that she can earn money with IPSX. She can let others use her Internet connection and IP address in Spain whenever she is at home and not in her vacation home. It is completely safe, and she can use the income from this to pay for the price of the Internet connection. Mary even has a secret hope that she will earn more than the actual cost of the Internet connection…
Mary likes to drink and eat quality food
When Mary isn’t watching science fiction on TV, she enjoys strolling around and visiting the local grocery stores. While in Spain she enjoys eating Paella, something I cannot understand at all. Just like at the picture beneath… who can ever enjoy that?
In the grocery store, she asks for a wine recommendation. She is told that wine made from the Sauvignon Blanc grape and stored in steel tanks is the perfect match. But, she is also warned that there are lots of fake labels out there, so she should download this app from Google Play Store to scan the label to check that all the information is correct and that it truly is a Sauvignon Blanc wine that was stored in steel tanks before it was bottled.
She downloads the app, but at the first wine bottle, she doesn’t see any QR code to be scanned. She is worried that it is a fake, so she finds another Sauvignon Blanc bottle with a QR code. She scans the label, and at once she finds information about where the wine was made, when it was made, when it was bottled, and when it arrived at the store she is currently visiting. In the bottom of the application, she sees a little text saying: “Powered by Vechain.” She has just caused a transaction to happen at the Vechain blockchain without having the tiniest clue about what happened.
Mary is now walking home happily. She is ready to eat paella, drink a good wine, and she doesn’t even realize that she has used three different cryptocurrencies in the last days!
There are for sure lots of other cryptocurrencies that will have a real-life usage that grandmother Mary will enjoy. Which ones do you think Mary will use, with or without knowing about them? I would love to hear your comments and to read your thoughts on the subject.
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I don’t get it… why pay with cryptocurrencies when VISA is much cheaper, easier and better?
What about Ripple? Maybe grandma will transfer money to her grandchildren from her Spanish bankaccount, and to make an international money transfer they will use Ripple and the Ripplenet? If banks would start using this in international transfers, that would be a giant usecase for everyday people.
Vechain is much more than just the wine-stuff mentioned here. They have something they call a MPP (Multi Payment Protocol), and with this payments can easily be made in USD and Euro by the common man, while there is another transaction taking place beneath the surface using cryptocurrency. We still have to wait and see it in action, but if they manage to get some good applications using this platform, it will be awesome, and even grandma will be amazed!
What gives value is if the usage of blockchain and cryptocurrencies will actually improve the world, improve businesses and make things better. It will only have the right to exist if they actually do that!