Last Mile Cryptocurrency Adoption: A Joke

A husband and wife are camping on safari. Emerging from their tent they see a blood thirty lion charging right towards them across the savannah. The wife starts putting on her running shoes and the husband exclaims, “What are you doing, honey?! You can’t outrun a lion!”

The wife replies, “I only need to outrun you”.

It’s an old joke. And it’s a fitting metaphor for today’s cryptocurrency adoption strategy.

Cryptocurrency is the dopey husband that thinks it needs to fight the lion to survive.

The lion represents the world’s dominant financial systems: it’s the US dollar, the federal reserve, Wall Street, crony capitalists, too big to fail banks and all the other usual suspects. Often it’s a cruel creature, but no one doubts it’s king of the jungle. For all its flaws, it created more prosperity than the world has ever seen. The lion is a very powerful being.

Then there’s the wife, who represents the world’s inferior financial systems: the Venezuelan bolivars, the Zimbabwean dollars, the mobile money providers and the millions of unbanked entrepreneurs around the world.

I am a true believer in the value of cryptocurrency as a currency. It can protect those oppressed by inflation, political instability and censorship. Helping the people who really need it now is the best way to gain traction, so it can come back with a gun and shoot the lion later.

So grab your goddamn sneakers, cryptocurrencies, and outrun your lousy wife.