One of the main issues that has held back the adoption of Bitcoin as a network for value transfer on the Internet is that it’s too difficult for the average person to figure out how to use it. With long strings of characters for Bitcoin addresses and volatility risk associated with holding the digital currency (among other issues), the lack of adoption among the general public should come as no surprise.
To combat the poor user experience associated with Bitcoin, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists now view Bitcoin as the plumbing that can power higher-level applications. In other words, startups are now hiding the fact that they’re using Bitcoin from their users (or rather just not mentioning the digital value transfer system at all.)
During the Bitcoin talk at SXSW Interactive 2016 , Freemit CEO John Biggs discussed the idea of hiding Bitcoin from the consumer with the Winklevoss twins , who co-founded the Bitcoin exchange Gemini . Biggs made his view on this topic clear during the recent event when he stated, “Our mission is not to talk about Bitcoin at all.”
Hiding the Technicals of Bitcoin
The Winklevoss twins agreed with Biggs’ overall sentiment. Tyler Winklevoss made a comparison between Bitcoin addresses and IP addresses to make his point. He stated: “You shouldn’t see a Bitcoin address ‒ just like when you go to Google and you type in ‘google.com’, you don’t see the IP address. I think that Bitcoin needs to be under the hood, it’s not user-friendly enough in a command line type format.” The Winklevoss twins have attempted to make Bitcoin as easy to use as possible on Gemini. Tyler noted, “If you sign up for Gemini, it’s just as easy as using any other website.”
Even for Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals on the Gemini platform, the Winklevoss […]
