What the hell is going on with the UX in cryptocurrency?
By: Flavio Lamenza
Tags: User Experience Design, User Experience, UX Design, UX, Bitcoin

What the hell is going on with the UX in cryptocurrency?

Everything is confusing. Are the Crypto experts making everything confusing on purpose?

I am a father and I don't want my kids to be in the future like "yeah… so my dad missed this opportunity, he never invested in Bitcoin. I can't believe he missed this". And all their friends, in the future, flying away in drones laughing and mine still driving a Fiat 500…

What did I do? Studied about Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple and all the Blockchain stuff. I studied hard. I also did further reading about Crypterium, Trezor and Ledger (bitcoin Wallets) and the open-source ones like MyEtherWallet. And last but not least, read a bit about mining. I was like:

What have I learned? Nothing.

Really.

What I know about real money? I work > I get paid > The money goes to the bank (which exists, and I can even see banks on the streets).

If I want to use the money I can use a plastic card (accepted everywhere) or paper money (which I can also see and touch). That's it. Everything else about real money is a variation of that. It's easy, seamless and straightforward.

At this moment the crypto experts are reading this "pffff… look at this guy. He can't even understand the open-source next generation data preservation market network and decentralized peer-to-peer blockchain.".

So, from the start, the creator of Bitcoin and blockchain is Satoshi Nakamoto… who is a unknown person or "people".

This is Satoshi Nakamoto who said he had never heard of Bitcoin. Photo from AP.Associated Press.

Okay… This is not that bad, since Häagen-Dazs is also not the name of a Norwegian or Swedish family. It's just a name created by two americans who thought it would help them sell more ice-cream (and it did, it's absolutely delicious. Thank you).

The difference is that if 💩 hits the fan I know where to find the two americans and know who they are. With bitcoin the hole is a lot deeper. Here are some curious articles about him:

If you think this is not important, that's fine… let's move on to understand how to buy a bitcoin. If you don't know how to buy a bitcoin, don't worry, because I don't know either, you are not alone 👊

If you google "How much is 1 bitcoin worth", you will get this (results shown on the 3rd of March, 2018).

What I know (and actually, what is cool about Bitcoins), is that there is a finite number, 21 million Bitcoins in total. Where they are, no one actually knows… you would need to mine them. This is from Investopedia:

Bitcoin is like gold in many ways. Like gold, Bitcoin cannot simply be created arbitrarily. Gold must be mined out of the ground, and Bitcoin must be mined via digital means. Linked with this process is the stipulation set forth by the founders of Bitcoin that, like gold, it have a limited and finite supply. In fact, there are only 21 million Bitcoins that can be mined in total. Once miners have unlocked this many Bitcoins, the planet’s supply will essentially be tapped out, unless Bitcoin’s protocol is changed to allow for a larger supply.

This was going well, until "Unless Bitcoin's protocol is changed to allow for a larger supply".

So is it finite or not?

At this moment the user (myself included) is as lost as a blind person in a shootout.

But the user is brave, relentless and decides to try to buy some cryptowhatever. He asks for "easy" suggestions and hear things such as "Coinbase", or "Etoro". Alright… let's analyse Coinbase:

I decided to try and invest something, not as much as 8000 pounds for the simple reason of: I don't have it.

So I've decided to try with 90 pounds. Coinbase shows the following screen:

(by the way, I already did, the money is in my account, but this screen remains the same)

Clicked on "Add a Payment Method" and I can see two options:

Made me feel good that 90 pounds could be "investing large amounts".

In case you are making a SEPA (international transfer), Coinbase will only tell what banks are supported when you type the bank name into the field 🙄

After a bit of struggle and 30 days to confirm my payment (at that time, they told my my bank was not supported, but only AFTER I made the SEPA transfer), my 90 pounds were visible in my account. And finally I would buy my bitcoins to make sure my kids could fly with their friends in the future.

This is the e-mail I received:

"It's available in my account" What does this mean? Do I already have the Bitcoins?

If I go to my account, I see the following: