Written by LGHT. Subscribe to our Substack if you enjoy this piece.

For the past ten years I would agree that it seemed nonsensical to argue over linguistic variance. The main goal was to get the tech working and readily available.

Now that we have layer twos, alternative layer ones like Solana with cheap block space and a plethora of financial, creative, and storage applications, it feels prudent to bring the discussion back to words and marketing.

Counterclaims from people who dislike these subject matters may consist of:

Utility is the only thing that matters, words don’t do anything.
Application efficiency is upstream of everything else.
Good marketing attracts the wrong crowd at best and is a waste of resources.

I personally need not rebut any of this. The market already is.

To anyone in crypto, the use case is clear, the value prop is better. Yet, whenever crypto breaches mainstream discourse, the only things that are discussed are the gambling addiction aspects, the grifting, the large-scale theft, and the federal injustices.

We have less than 1% of digital economic activity. And we over-index our wealth of industrial capital on repeat infrastructure builds that sunset faster and faster.

What the hell is a wallet?

If you use crypto, you know. But imagine for a second that you were new to crypto again.

"Yeah, a wallet is this thing that you own and control, but you have to add as a Chrome extension to your browser. And if you lose these set of words, you lose access to all your money. But money isn't the only thing you can use this thing for. You can also use it to create these things called artifacts and mint things. But mint means two diametrically opposed functions. But yeah, you can choose a fox, a rainbow, or a blue C. There are also group versions of these as well. Just pick whichever you want. But not every site is going to support all of them."

If crypto is to gain adoption in the demographics we believe it benefits (developers, content creators, media companies, and entrepreneurs), then we must rid the industry of its trial-by-fire initiation.

A wallet is the foundation point for desired consumer behaviors. But is wallet the right term?

In a wallet you can:

Store finances.
Earn yield on finances.
Trade currencies.
Store media and content.
Buy media and content.
Send and receive media, content, and finances to others.
Browse the internet (if on mobile).
Connect to websites for consumer verifications.
Create custom contracts that interact with the blockchain.
Switch between EVM layers (and now alt Layer 1s for some).

Is that really a wallet?

To me, it’s starting to feel more like a hard drive or cloud storage. And if you embark on the thought experiment:

“Okay, cool. So now you understand crypto. You're going to need to download this hard drive onto your computer to do anything.”

versus,

Okay, cool. So now you understand crypto, you're going to need to download this wallet on your computer to do anything.

Maybe you agree with where i’m headed?

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Gentrifying Wallets in Hopes That We Actually Get the People Who Would Benefit Most from the Tech to Adopt It