Think about that: Monero represents a new paradigm for our entire species, and you would have me believe its just another alt coin? No way.
I agree with you, but that might present a certain difficulty in re speed of adoption. We like to use "disruptive" as a buzzword, but like most buzzwords it does a fine job of obfuscating too.
Truly disruptive innovations take a long time before they become mainstreamed simply because the culture needs time to catch up with them.
Case in point: the video phone. The first vidphone didn't come from Skype: it came from AT&T's Bell Labs. A phone with a 7" CRT (in colour, too), it was ready-to-be-introduced as of the late 1960s. But it wasn't, because it was too ahead of its time - not technologically, but culturally.
On the
consumer side, the prime client base for yakkin' on the phone was the housewife circuit - and that's where the cultural difficulties started. We're used to the casual and rumpled look, but that "cultural innovation" came via the Internet. During the dotcom bubble, a techy guy appearing unshaven and unkempt meant a workaholic: someone who got right on the Internet and started working in the then-new 24/7 cyberspace world. He looked the way he looked because he was so hard-working, he forgot to shower and groom himself. The same thing went for the female of the species, unkempt-wise.
People dressed down at home earlier, but they didn't show it in public. Back in the pre-Internet days, it was largely expected to groom yourself and see to your appearance before appearing in public. In the privacy of your home, it was okay to lounge around in a dirty undershirt or a housecoat. But in public, it was not: even taking out the garbage in your bathrobe or housecoat was iffy.
Note how the audiophone meshed well with this private/public grooming divide. And note how AT&T's vidphone clashed with it.
On the
business side, the use case was: "Think of the advantages you'll have once you're able to see the fellow on the other end of the line! In the old days, you could only take his measure through his tone. But with this new vidphone, you can read his body language too! All from your good old chair! It's just like an insta-meeting that takes place right in your own office! All with AT&T's new marvel of high technology, the living-colour video phone!"
That little come-on was laconically shot down by this catch-22: "If it's important enough for me to gauge a man, I'd better see him in person. If it's not, why would I pay [a lot] extra for this whiz-bang gizmo?"
So...bye-bye videophone. Technologically, America was ready for it back in the
Mad Men days. But culturally, it was in no way ready. That's why the innovation-ribbon went to Skype and not AT&T. It's an excellent case study on the fate of a truly disruptive innovation: one that disrupts our good old habits.
"The hell of it is", Monero adoption into the Joe-Average world would be a lot less difficult in the culture that shot down AT&T's vidphone. You could present the advantages of Monero simply by allegorizing the current fiat system as a gaggle of Peeping Toms. That would get the use-case through pretty durn swiftly.
But not in this culture. The sad part is, your prime adoption demographic has grown up in a post-9/11 and post-Internet-Bubble world. It's not going to be easy for them to get comfortable with the lost right of financial privacy, not in days when it's so easy to bad-guy someone like that. We really are living in a "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide" culture. Who wants to be compared to a pedophile, a drug dealer or a corporate fraudster?
But there is a way out: through history. Back in the 1920s, when bootleggers and illegal alcohol were the talk of many towns, the U.S. government issued $1000 bills - including $1000 gold certificates:
Five of these babies, and you had the price of a nice house in your wallet without any wallet bulge. You could buy a pretty fine homestead on the spot, and the worst that would happen is that you'd "cause talk." You could do it all on a whim, and every bank in the known universe would be completely cut out of the transaction. You could buy a house, a car, jewelry, all from money in your billfold and there was no need to let anyone know about anything. You could say "I don't trust banks!" and
mean it. You could live your affluent life "unbanked" without any inconvenience. All you'd have to do is declare your income and fork over the taxes: if you declared and paid an amount that more-or-less squared with your lifestyle, a "reasonable" amount, you'd never, ever get audited.
Monero should appeal to the folks who find those long-ago times exotic and intriguing...
