I have been onboarding “normies” lately into Ethereum in Vietnam. Again, despite the popular claim that Vietnam is leading in crypto adoption, situation on the ground is different.
A bit of context
There are non stop unethical attempts by questionable centralized exchanges (like MEXC, BingX, ATX, Onus, etc.) and KOLs luring uninformed individuals into degenerate gambling and unsustainble high yield schemes, then freeze their accounts, steal their funds, or unload dogshit coins. I do my best to call them out (my facebook reach is pretty solid) but they pay big for marketing spotlights and recruit high profile folks to “clean up” their reputation.
On the other hand, me, a solo builder with practically zero budget, on a quest to truly onboard people into Ethereum via my own conviction. I have staked years of my life already and will continue to do so even when it comes at great personal cost. I was determined to not follow any of the popular methods to onboard “normies” like making it super easy, or download an exchange app, or do all the technical mental gymnastic. I didn’t believe in those methods anyways. We have been parroting the same delusion about the billions everyday person that would come into crypto to use our tech and buy our bags. As of today, are we on track to at least make that delusion into reality or is it a mirage that we can never touch?
For those who don’t know, Vietnam went through a period of economic mismangement in the 1980s so bad that even the government had to admit publicly (they couldn’t even sweep it under the rug). Everyone’s parents (50 yrs and above) would have a story about their experience during this time. Not just that, a botched currency conversion practically wiped out many people savings in banks, forcing people to use gold and USD as a medium of exchange and store of value, along with rampant inflation and rock bottom poverty. My approach is based on this historical fact, that’s based on publicly available information and not some made up story to smear the government of Vietnam. To be fair, they have done good things to take Vietnam from a war torn country to what it is today.
What's the approach?
So my approach is focusing on “self sovereignty”, with Ethereum being the safe haven alternative financial system. I don’t tell people that the Vietnam payment system sucks. It’s actually quite good, because I actually worked on it not too long ago. I don’t tell people about any “highly profitable opportunities” on Ethereum waiting for them to pile their money in. I instead focus on helping people to understand this idea of “self sovereignty” for their assets with ETH being the hardest asset of all, a resilient store of value that can be very flexible via a diverse ecosystem of defi protocols. A side effect is that you don't have the issue of gas because people onboard directly to ETH. People love this; people understand the value of "self sovereignty" (even my parents do) and that's exactly why Ethereum is important.
I also don't believe in taking any shortcuts. I spend the time to build a profile of someone that should consider moving their assets to Ethereum (so not to waste time on such broad audience). I onboard people directly into self-custodial wallet with my favourite at the moment is Uniswap Wallet, no centralized exchanges, no non-custodial wallet like Privy. I also assist everyone on OpSec practices so they can be safe when they start out. I recommend an upper limit of $1000 before telling them to go buy a hardware wallet (Ledger and Trezor are available locally). After they get used to it, I slowly introduce them to more wallet options for them to explore; and I want them to try as many hot wallet as possible, just keep generating new wallet for each. Eventually, they will settle into a few options that fit what they want to do. On/off-ramping in Vietnam is a whole different topic for another time.
So...
For us crypto people, we need to go back to our roots, why we were here in the first place. Then, we need to advocate these core values to everyone else around us. The long road up ahead needs people with high conviction to resist any attempts to capture by our oppositions and continuously come up with creative solutions to protect the sovereignty of our assets. And for that, there is no shortcut to revolution.