An interesting development in the progression of Bitcoin was brought up recently by one of its bigger detractors. Gold bug and anti-Bitcoiner, Peter Schiff, who was gifted a BTC wallet, managed to lose access to his coins which sparked a flurry of criticism from the cryptocurrency space.

Things got worse for Schiff when he was adamant that he did not lose his password, but later admitted that the confusion came from him trying to use his pin as a password – having never known his password, to begin with.

The heckling from the Bitcoin community grew worse as people claimed that he should not be giving advice about Bitcoin without a clear understanding and perhaps, he shouldn’t even be using the inclusive digital currency.

However, Schiff gained an unlikely ally in Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao who says that the Bitcoin space needs more of these types of “negative” voices.

Be all-inclusive

Bitcoin often boasts about being inclusive and a financial system for all. However, when this proved to be difficult for a person like Schiff to try and enter into, the Bitcoin community turned on him rather than looked to help.

It may not please all those in the space to have someone to get confused and irritated with the day-to-day workings of a Bitcoin wallet, but the fact that there is a user experience disconnect is not Schiff’s fault – it is the wallets.

In order to be a mainstream alternative that reaches critical mass, these small flaws need to be addressed. In banking for example, if there was a similar situation faced by a user, they would have a helpline to call to figure out the problem and be aided all the way – Schiff only faced a barrage of criticism.

User testing

Part of the problem is most likely Schiff’s generally negative attitude towards Bitcoin and his pig-headedness to getting things right. But it cannot be denied that Bitcoin is still not entirely user-friendly and welcoming.

There are many issues with wallets and protocols that make Bitcoin difficult for people to try and pick up and use. It remains well understood by younger people, as well as tech-savvy ones, but the rest of the world is more afraid of the unknown.

If these concerns from Schiff were taken seriously and acted upon, it may well be that the drive to make Bitcoin as easy to use as a bank, or email, or other normalised technology, the adoption rate would spike much more than off its market movement.

