I've been living on crypto since 2015. I know exactly which coins work best as digital cash. But people ask me which ones will work long-term. Quick post on what I call the "adoption churn". Keep reading if you want to know if your favorite coin will make it!
First, there's a bunch of different reasons a crypto will or will not get enough users to make it. Some data chains can only get one killer app and still be okay! I'm talking about money, about currency that's used by the end user to buy stuff.
There's a few different coins that are almost universally accepted by crypto-supporting services. Every so often, these "churn over" and new ones are added, and old ones get kicked out. This has changed many times over the years, and is critical in determining utility. First it was Bitcoin-only. Then Bitcoin + ShapeShift. Then BTC+BCH. Then BTC+BCH+ETH+LTC+Doge (the BitPay standard), and now those plus Dash or Polygon/AVAX sometimes. Now there's some EVM-only ones! This isn't universal, but the concept holds.
Getting "churned out" can be a death sentence to a struggling crypto! You want to hang on in the churn as long as possible until your unique selling proposition can make you win out over competitors. The more major "churns" you're in, the better!
Some major services and companies I call "churn determinants", in that coins they do or don't support tend to churn in our out. BitPay and Coinbase are big ones in the US, other major exchanges too. If you're not on Binance, do you even exist?
It's important to keep an eye out on new churn determinants. I think adoption facilitators like Bitrefill, Ionia, Spritz Finance, Swapin, etc. are very important. Increasingly the DEX world like THORChain, the Maya Protocol, Uniswap, etc. will be do-or-die!
Notice in #4 I mentioned that there's some EVM-only churns. This is fascinating, because for the first time, in some parts of the ecosystem Bitcoin has actually been churned out! This is why smart contract ecosystem support will be CRUCIAL moving forward.
The digital cash adoption playbook, then, is three steps:
1) Identify the major current "churns"
2) Target inclusion into the major "churn determinants" that influence which coins are in there
3) Build on end-user advantages over other churn competitors.