Bridging The Crypto Knowledge Gap

There is a huge gap between developers, marketers, writers, and users (or investors) when considering our knowledge of the Cryptocurrency field.

Developers speak their language, while marketers (influencers, advertisers, etc.) usually have no idea about this technology and just pick some fancy words to create new catchphrases that can be outside of the scope of cryptocurrency.

Each person is specialized in one field, and usually totally ignores the rest.

It is up to us, the writers, to understand everything, translate the important development news, and pass this information to the rest. Marketing, more than often will transform this information into a popular message and try to make it viral. It is up to the writers again to correct the mistakes and provide a better explanation as very often the message can be misleading.

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A clear example of how influencers are often disconnected from reality is the previous year when markets collapsed due to covid. The last wagon of the marketing train, crypto influencers, proven to have very limited knowledge of economics and finance. This fact deterred many investors from clearly understanding how the crypto market could rapidly evolve. Academics didn't follow in crypto because of the naivety and mistakes of the top narratives. Yes, the market reached 2.5 trillion dollars, but it also became a toy at the hands of one influencer that is gaming the market for months, trying to help $TSLA stock not crash.

These guys were just repeating the word hyper-inflation for months right after ex-president Donald Trump announced quantitative easing and a huge stimulus package to boost the US economy during the Covid lockdown. The FED did print all that money and all the markets bounced.

However, a lot of narratives coming from cryptocurrency evangelists were not realistic. These guys were jumping in any discussion trying to explain how "Bitcoin fixes this". One guy even said that Bitcoin was going to stop all wars. These statements were from some of the top Crypto influencers with many years in the market and connections with top Crypto-related financial institutes.

A financially literate person takes every comment like that with a pinch of salt and this kind of behavior by top influencers pushed most of them away.

And as a result, we are left with Musk.

Image from: Imgflip

Inflation was expected to rise, but some of the crypto influencers gave an excuse to mainstream media and economists to call everyone in crypto a financial illiterate.

Hyperinflation is a term describing inflation levels higher than 50%, which has catastrophic results for the economy and the national currency.

Inflation in the US today, only started rising right after the latest stimulus package announced by Biden in February 2021. One year later from the first stimulus package and the beginning of the pandemic.

Prices of goods are rising not just because money M1 and M2 supply in the US has increased rapidly. Most economies suffer from surging prices on Chinese imported goods. While I don't agree with the FED policy either, it is an important notice.

Source: Trading Economics

Inflation in the US reached 4.2% in April. This is just the official statistics which when talking about household prices and cost of living, usually it is double this percentage. An 8% increase in a basket of goods is important inflation but in April 2021 we also witnessed a surge in factory-gate prices for goods and services from China. (Source: WSJ)

Shortage of containers and recovery of European demand also increased shipping cost from China that has almost quadrupled since the beginning of the pandemic. (Source: FT)

Just these factors alone could drive prices higher, and while I'm always judgemental of the recent FED and ECB policies, this is not the only factor that increases inflation.

Still, one year later, inflation is very far (90-95% off) from what many Crypto "experts" were advocating as "hyperinflation in the US".

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Developers have their language and while they can understand each other with ease, usually it is very difficult for someone without blockchain development skills to follow their conversations.

Usually, when reading and listening to devs discussions we are missing many details that we have later to read, understand, and ask many beginner questions.

However, since we are in this field, we have to understand the core of what developers are creating. We don't need to learn to read the Bitcoin code and while often we can understand some parts, usually we won't as we have very limited experience in programming.

Once a change in the code has been tested, we can observe the results. Some authors write about software they've never used and while they may have a very creative command of the English language, they still offer very little value with their posts.

If 50% of an article is coming from our own experience, then it is providing value. The more we use a platform and find its secrets, the better we understand a product, and the most precise we can then write about it and define the concept to our readers.

There is a huge knowledge gap between the developers and the users, and users rely on cryptocurrency articles that will inform them correctly. When it comes to developments and the code, a better understanding is required on our part, as we are the ones that will have to explain what devs are creating.

We dig deeper and always try to use the platforms we discuss in our posts. Can someone make an article based on technical analysis without having ever traded? It could be someone that has academic knowledge but no experience in the field. Can that person deal with emotions and not make beginners' mistakes? I highly doubt that. Field experience is equally important as knowledge.

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I'm always excited when listening to Bitcoin Cash devs discussions. I also read very often articles from Bitcoin Core and Ethereum devs, try to thoroughly understand them, and later explain my findings in simpler terms.

Often the language has to be technical, however, our posts will mostly refer to users that have very little technical knowledge, and we have to explain terms that aren't too common. We don't need to explain everything unless our posts are referring only to beginners. Usually, beginners will find the basics after a couple of days, so our articles have to be concentrated on explaining more advanced topics.

Having this in mind, to provide more value with our articles it is imperative to research and comprehend the topic of discussion to manage to put it in layman's terms. User base adoption requires our posts to be understood by those that are not specialized.

The technicals are important, as readers want to understand how everything works, but most importantly the outcome of each development is expected by the reader.

Most devs are not interested in marketing their ideas, they can't consume all their time promoting their code on Reddit, read.cash, or other publications. This is the job of those with skills and knowledge to convey the message in a language understood by everyone.

We are all here to help the industry thrive. Our efforts aim to fulfill our interests but also result in benefit to the whole field. Crypto is a society that is inter dependable on the different classes of participants. We may belong in various of these classes at the same time (investors, writers, influencers, developers), however, we are all promoting the prosperity of the Crypto industry.

Filling the knowledge gap is up to the writers.

We improve our knowledge on finance and cryptocurrencies, on economics and geopolitics, and often we have to criticize (constructively) publications and media posts that are in accordance with reasonable arguments.

Lead Image taken from: Marketing91.com

Originally posted on read.cash

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