Why We're Not Using Crypto, and How to Fix It | Joel Valenzuela | ETHDam 2024

[Music] all right hey everyone you're the the faithful few the Brave the pre- dinner post coffee rake you know stragglers um I'll promise to make it worth your while you just few but I'm sure more will trickle in so I want to start out with saying you guys get to be pulled first maybe I'll pull it at the end as well but buy a show of hands who here owns some kind of cryptocurrency is there anyone who doesn't a couple okay so of those people who own it how many people self- custody mean you hold your own private Keys now we're about half half the room of those people how many have ever bought or paid for a good or service with cryptocurrency slightly smaller but still pretty good how many do that on a yearly basis every single year you've done it okay how about a monthly basis every month you pay for at least one thing okay wellow how about weekly we'll can you fine that's fine daily now daily I can't even count myself because I don't always buy something every day but as far as like weekly for sure so if we think about it right we are have anyone kept track of the time is it oh 15 years into crypto how many trillion dollars is the market capitalization today um is it two I don't know it's big we've been building for 15 years thank you by the way I love what you guys a built what everyone's built I use it we have to realize we have been building for nobody because nobody is using it today now there's a lot of I'm going to sound a little harsher than maybe you know trust me I'm actually a nice guy just look at my Twitter oh wait don't look there but I might actually be a nice guy the point is uh a lot of people have been building under this presupposition that we are going to at some point use this technology to live free individually or promote the global freedom of the world and that's great you do need everything and no one sto building no one at some point we need to start using a little sooner so we connect those two dots of what are we building who are we building it for and make sure we're not building stuff that no one will use like we have today so uh just to introduce myself finally uh my name is Joel Valenzuela I've been thank you thank you one and only yeah well there's a cou there's some baseball player actually with that name but that's a different story um I've been using cryptocurrency for about 11 years now and ever since I've been using it I've been using it as often as I could and for the last I guess 9 Years it'll be this December um I've been living entirely off of cryptocurrency I have not earned f fiat currency at all and then the fall about 8 years is since I closed my bank account so I've been doing this ridiculous experiment which is you know very early but I've been kind of doing this um I do I run a business development and marketing for dash currently as of January I have been involved in the dash ecosystem in the past I've done a bunch of different things over the years and over the last couple of years I kind of sat back a little bit I kind of sat back and was like where is all this going I'm just going to do what I do I'll talk about everything I'll do everything and whatever and at some point I realized that sitting at the sidelines isn't helping anymore that at some point we are 15 years in me and a few people I know like you know I can count on one hand actually use cryptocurrency for most of their transactions and it's my responsibility to do something about this especially as I know something about this and I can so I'm kind of blaming myself here so I decided I got to get back into it full time and I picked the path that I thought I could make the most difference and I'm just going to keep pushing it forward until we get there or until you know something happens to me which fingers crossed it doesn't so there's three big problems with why we don't largely use cryptocurrency today there's three big reasons I could there's a million let's start with this okay so number one it's just too easy to pump bags and get Dev funding to build a bunch of stuff for a day that doesn't that may or may not come and I'm kind of arguing against the free market here not really but basically why wouldn't you if you spent your whole time and your whole studying and everything to build a coin or whatever and you can do it in a way that people will pay you why do you say no to the money say no I'm going to build something that probably no one's using today because I you know principles or something like principles don't pay the bills so yes you do have to pay the bills first I mean some people have created pumpy scams whatever but a lot of good faith developers have built really awesome things that just didn't end up to Market and maybe weren't the best for Market but just because that's where the money was so they went for that um the number two thing which I think is very interesting is we have this internal Unwritten rule in the crypto space of a kind of non-compete Clause sort of with Bitcoin especially Bitcoin started everything out people still kind of hold it up a lot of people less so today but as Freedom money that this is the revolution kind of give homage to satoshi's amazing invention and pretend that that's still today that today it's the same thing and even ethereum which has done so many Fantastic things and built so much eded because of not doing what Bitcoin did but no no we're not competing at all we're doing over this of course Bitcoin maximalists don't care but that's a different story so there's kind of non-compete Clause with Bitcoin over Freedom money and I don't think bitcoin's succeeding at Freedom money today I'm sorry I just don't and no a lot of people agree with me and are not competing for some reason there's this internal we can't do it but then there's also a non- collaborate Clause amongst people who do compete right how many times do you hear a Bitcoin cash guy say something nice about Litecoin how many how often do you see a lite coiner say something nice about Dash how often do you hear a dash person say something nice about Monero how often do you hear a a Monero person say something nice about zcash never so especially that last one but we have this thing of where the network effect is so split because everyone first of all upholds Bitcoin as something that currently is not now I'm not even making the argument that it doesn't have value or whatever that's a that's a completely different discussion but just as the freedom money for payments thing somehow people won't compete they won't even compete and when they do they won't band together and be like sure let's compete against each other for who gets the most market share but let's make sure the market grows let's make sure we're not bashing each other all the time not doing single coin solutions for the five people that pay for the coffee over the course of a month and then the business stops accepting it when you all could have grown sustain to that adoption for all your communities and the last thing is people in the bless you bless you people in the community in the crypto Community keep gaslighting users about using things that just don't work like I and obviously the number one example of that you know is the low hanging fruit is Bitcoin and the custodial lightning ecosystem and all that about failed Channel payments whatever that's the easy criticism right the harder criticism goes down to maybe not that much harder but like for example the very fragmented ethereum ecosystem so I wanted to do some subscriber nfts for my channel and so I did them and at first I was like okay what am I going to use ethereum not at those gas fees so I have to pick an L2 and then okay polygon seems to be the biggest one and I centralize okay whatever I I don't I can't be picky here so I do polygon and then it seems like arbitrum is doing better now and it's on like the dexes that I like and stuff and I'm like I I made the wrong L2 I picked the wrong L2 and then you go to the swap and it's like okay usdt usdc what on which is it on Tron is it on arbitrum is it on avac is it on Salon is on whatever and people say yeah just use this use this to pay your bills your groceries this is great instead of saying we need to do better and we need to make something that actually works and it's that's just viously a more specific example amongst all this but there's just so many bad things like oh send a payment you can't move it for six confirmations okay oh you have to wait for confirmations in 2024 are you kidding me like what are we doing here etc etc the thing goes on and on did I annoy everyone yet who who is slightly annoyed by me at least raise your hand someone okay oh there we go yeah I know I knew I knew I'd get in there somewhere so what do we do about it I have a I'm not a genius otherwise you know I'd be running everything and you know you all be working for me so I'm not but if I did know but I do have some opinions right so the number one thing you do is the three things I complained about don't do that first Do no harm stop doing those things stop doing the um stop just putting money into pumpy things to pump your bags and stop doing the non-compete or non- cooperate Clause idea and stop gaslighting people over stuff that just does not work just stop it number one um number two actually might have forgot what's number two on the list let me actually check this real quick see this is how you know um this is authentic is because you actually have seen me po poke into my notes when I forget oh yes how could I forget you have to build from a principal's first standpoint and for me in crypto there's three big principles I'm just talking I'm talking about the money thing but it can apply to everything number and this is not in order of magnitude by the way they're just there number one is stop using government money right you don't want your token whatever your value thing to be pegged to something that is centralized and ruggable and so that's where like the Bitcoin type store of value narrative comes from or bit denominating Bitcoin whatever it is and now I'm not against people using stable coins as a tool right not at all it just at some point you should be trying to push people towards using something that doesn't have value that rugs people basically and the number two thing is self- custody I think this is the most important thing of the entire point of this is you own your money you own your money you can't have people take it away from you say no to custodial Solutions just sometimes you might like wherever you have to okay whatever but let's start let's stop signing people up for c for custodial Solutions if we need to we can get people to uh learn about self- custody or get self- custody solutions to be easier to use but just reject that and then the third one is privacy Now privacy the F the the biggest part of privacy is just pseudonymity where this is very hard in the Western World to do anything without kyc so obviously we're trying to hit as many of these three principles when building and adopting as possible some do your best so if you have a kyc solution to onboard people for their receive their paycheck in crypto because they can't natively earn fine whatever you're doing your best but so kyc but also um privacy is a massive thing and there's stuff like the whole evm world is just very transparent and and I'm not going to talk too much criticism about that because of the awesome projects here today like for example rail gun that's doing a lot of great work to make that better and you know there's other you know there's privacy tools on other chains but basically we need to at least have that those three principles when we're building and then the final thing that I think we should do is just make sure your ux doesn't suck your user experience make sure it's straightforward and streamlined to where people can scan a QR code send or send to a username that's a big one and send and it just works and it's not like which token I use this and that then okay fine for like you know defi speculators doing 5x leverage this and that and meme tone okay fine you can do all that but for the average person if you're trying to tell people to spend it just it should just work just work and because that's the um that's the experience people crave from the Fiat world they don't always get it by the way I've been experimenting with a lot of Fiat Bridges and there's cars don't always go through and they don't tell you why they don't go through and it's can be very frustrating but they do a very good job of like oh you tap your your watch whatever beep and it just goes we should Aspire for that kind of experience and stop making excuses for stuff that doesn't live up to that so that's the grand overview have I lost anyone yet no all right anyone have any ideas on how to do anything of this well start applying those three to don't do and then the three to do and you'll start to get actually some traction now what about today though I keep on saying 15 years you can't live today despite all the gloom and doom that I told you you can live on crypto today and I'm not just saying I'm trying to live on crypto today I'm saying you you you might already a little bit you know you I'm saying every one can start at least 20% 30% 80% even 100% there are tools out there so um how am I on time anyone checking oh we got five minutes perfect I think I actually timed this pretty well so I'm going to do a quick run down for how anyone here can start trying to live on crypto today and let's just you know speed around so let me hit these buttons see if it works all right so number one if you have a business if you have a business and in Europe by the way message me at the end of this if you want to actually start signing up for any of these things because I do have some affiliate codes for some of these so I can actually track not personally by the way this is not my personal money but but more importantly so I can see how many people actually follow through and are like oh okay I'm G to actually do something rather than oh we love to clap at this guy talking about living on crypto but then when it comes to do anything nah and then I have to change I have to change my Approach so if you want to accept crypto as a business and you're mostly in the EU and also you know the UAE and places like that um ivent pay is fantastic they got uh e-commerce stuff they got physical point of sale apps they got physical point of sale devices they even have vending machines they'll sell you a vending machine you can just sell anything with crypto if that isn't cool I mean if you have a store whatever throw up a crypto vending machine see see if you get people to use that these guys are great and of course they do Fiat conversion and all that stuff for the stuff that businesses tend to need but okay fine so if you are in the US there's very few good payment process everyone knows about the bit pays and stuff I have a relationship with these guys Rocket Fuel and I know in fact an apartment complex in Manchester New Hampshire or a property group that uses them for letting all their pay tenants pay in crypto so they just send them they email them an invoice and then they just pay it and then there you go you're you pay your rent in crypto and it's you can tell your landlord anywhere you are say hey can you sign up for these guys so I can pay you in crypto I'll P pay and pay you more a little whatever all of a sudden you can pay your rent in crypto so that's a great that's a great thing to keep uh track of go ahead wait for the as soon as I see the last phone go down then we go to the next one um I like these guys too now payments um they for people who don't need the Fiat conversion aspect for your business you can use these guys I know a lot of people that do use them I think travala any Has anyone used travala here yeah a few people they use now payments um whatever it's pretty obvious from the invoice which one they use but so for example if you want that kind of experience you can just receive crypto there you go so that's if you have a business and you want to get paid in it right so next um if you don't have a business if you are purely a worker and you want to get paid in crypto the OG of is of this is bit wage where they will create a bank account in your name and your company can direct deposit they don't even have to know it's crypto and you just Auto get paid out I think it's just BTC and eth and some stable coins right now but you can automatically get that done and that's kind of the OG of that service I'm a very big fan of this company and I'm going to mention it a whole bunch of times uh Spritz has an has an on-ramp feature that lets you you on-ramp easily from your bank account to self custodial crypto they are working on the a bit wage style direct deposit type thing where you could also get paid but not just BTC and eth but also uh everything else they support like any of the like Avalanche all the evm thingies Dash um even pulse chain I think I think they even got that so if you want to get paid all in pulse for example there you go you can do it or you will be able to do it very soon all right so um if you want to I should go back here for just a the back button doesn't work oh well if you want to pay bills like utility bills those hard things to pay Spritz which I just mentioned has a bill pay function only for the US for now swap in Works in mostly Europe but also other countries in the world any eban number whatever kind of place so if you just all you have to do is just go to pay your bill gives you QR code you pay boom you paid your bill fantastic so what else do you have to buy not like you ever buy anything else um did this hang up do you want me to just go through okay did the remote die maybe I hit the wrong button um anyway I'll just go through the rest feel free to hit me up on telegram on Twitter on wherever else and we'll we'll talk about the more details but as anyone here use bit refill okay that's great I would love it to be a lot more than that but that's that's fine so bit refill is a company that mostly started with like phone refills like that's how I pay off pay my phone for example um and they also sell gift cards they have the biggest gift card selection have a very smooth user experience and instant delivery so bit refill will basically let you pay for almost anything in a lot of countries like oh you want to go you're in the US you want to do Home Remodeling buy a Home Depot gift card for exactly the amount you want at the checkout and just scan it and you're good oh you want to go to Costa Coffee same deal you want to do whatever else um I paid for my flight here because even though I could have used a bunch of other things the the lowest price was on something called flight gift which sells gift cards for flights and so I paid it via bit refill give it another try maybe I press the on button there there we go oh did I press it press it again apparently it only goes forward anyway so we go to bit refill you can use it for almost anything um if you want a travel travala is also good and I I like them because it's like a seamless experience for everything whether your flight your hotel um for someone who doesn't really use cards and stuff uh when you book hotels through them they will have their own cards in your name on file like virtual cards just for that for like am minut for you know incidentals and stuff which doesn't seem to really enter people's head but if you don't have a card that's a huge pain point at hotels I'm sure people who know me can kind of attest and so now you basically have okay you can earn crypto through all these things you can spend it what else can you do like people have Financial things so that's where a lot of people here you know working in the defi space come in um I'm a huge fan of this one app in particular but there's so many like it this one's called a Thor wallet which is a interface for Thor chain the Maya protocol chain flips saride deck whenever they launch and all the evm like Unis swap kind of things so the self custodial wallet that then you can use to swap from any asset to any asset over Dex rails provide liquidity get earned from that Etc do all your like Financial type stuff but in the crypto world so it's not just I'm living like a cash-based person but with digital cash it's like okay you're like a real human being now you got Investments like look at that so you can do all that completely non-custodial all on decentralized Rails they do have onramps and they do have cards and stuff if you want to do the kyc or whatever or involve your bank because that's what you have it works for that but for someone like me I haven't done any of that and I still use them so if you have something like that now all of a sudden you have the whole financial picture of your whole life basically you can do everything you don't need to hold any Fiat at all and you probably unless it's a requirement in your forsaken country to you probably don't have to have a bank account at all right that's kind of the entire thing today so what I'm saying as a big sort of wrap-up to this is you can live on crypto today it's not always the smoothest but you can and to where I could confidently teach anyone in this room to do at least 50% of their life in crypto if we can do that today remember that the the market decides what Solutions get created and succeed who is the market is the market in this room yes the market is all of you guys guys you are the market and if you express your demand Money Talks right through wanting to use these services to live on crypto or not just these Services any services or just say I wish there was one and I'd be willing to pay for it then it will be easier to do this and if we just you know get off our butts start putting our heads together make this work we can really make it happen now remember um the ultimate goal it should be separating money from State or separating money from Agents of power who would control you we have the opportunity to live on crypto today let's start doing it before it's too late all [Applause] right awesome thank you so much I was going to show I was going to show my telegram or whatever do you do you know how to spell the desert links desert is in dry Place links is in kitty cat or if you probably look up the crypto Canal Twitter or any eam tags I bet I bet you on Twitter on telegram on Discord all the same handle hit me up I'd be happy to talk to anyone and you'll be around for the next couple days right yeah I'll be around awesome thank you again so much for for educating us okay I got it [Music]