While the ICO runaway train speeds along, user friendliness and security are left behind.

I like to consider myself quite a learned individual, I have spent the better half of my life educating myself on topics from economics right through to quantum mechanics, but one of the most challenging areas, has to be the new wave of decentralized ledger technologies driving crypto-currencies, and the hopes and dreams of many businesses who have jumped on the “wagon” hoping for this to be the apotheosis of their dreams.

There is however, a barrier to entry, and that barrier is the amount of education one needs to embark on, just to get a sliver of context. I have spent hours traversing Reddit forums, being bombarded by telegram channels which in the most part become their own echo chambers to those purporting to know which crypto is going to explode next.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the fundamentals of a distributed consensus architecture for assuring ownership, and it’s value to humanity, not only is it important, it is necessary for the digital economy to evolve.

What is missing is the ease of use of these technologies, and their adoption on a mass scale.

50% of the people on the planet have IQ's in the double digits, and if those with IQ's 2–3 standard deviations above the mean find it challenging to transact in this mayhem, you can be assured that the majority of the planet are going to be left behind, and if we are going to succeed in transforming the digital economy, no “man” can be left behind.

Ease of use, and security need to be intrinsic, they need to be key features but I find them lacking in most products.

Give a “noob” $1000 and ask him to invest it in the top 10 crypto-currencies, he wouldn’t even know where to start, never-mind all the risks involved, from finding the right exchanges then being ripped off by some exchange transaction fees, through to exchanges being wiped clean by hacking syndicates.

Have you ever tried to set up a cold wallet? a What? yes… a cold wallet, the analogous technology to keeping cash under your pillow away from banks and the prying eyes of your nearest revenue service, and sometimes the implementation and the configuration of these wallets probably provides you with the same level of security as storing your crypto in plain sight.

For the digital economy to succeed, we need to envision a better system, one that has mass adoption, one that is secure and most important of all… simple and easy to use.