We are not saying anything controversial by pointing out that cryptocurrency has gone mainstream. In fact, people have been saying the cryptocurrency has gone mainstream for the past several years, although they still act surprised when a major corporation or company decides that they should probably get involved. But for so many people out there, crypto remains a blind spot in their finance knowledge. Something that they find almost impossible to get to grips with. And, if we’re being brutally honest, a lot of those people are our parents.

However, things have started to change thanks to that mainstreaming. People who would never have known what Bitcoin was a few years ago, now have a slightly better idea of its purpose and how it works. But given that cryptocurrency is a field that moves and shifts at such incredible speeds, it is always going to be difficult for people with a passing interest to keep up.

If you have recently started trading and/or investing in crypto, and you’re running out of ways to explain how things are changing out there, here are a few handy pointers to break the state of things down for your parents and anyone else who’s still asking you if Bitcoin and the Dark Web are the same thing.

Bitcoin Is Not The Only Coin

Let’s start with one of the most common misconceptions out there. A lot of people who don’t spend a lot of their time dealing with cryptocurrency still hold the belief that Bitcoin and crypto are the same thing. If you say that you’re checking to see how your crypto investment is doing, they will nod wisely and say “Bitcoin.”

Of course, we all know that there are many, many different coins out there these days, and we know that Bitcoin remains the biggest and best known. However, Ethereum has long been established as a formidable runner up and offers something really quite different. Bitcoin remains a form of decentralized currency, while Ethereum continues to be a tool for the development of a software development platform.

And then there are so many more, with companies both big and small looking to launch their own currencies. Maybe the best way to explain it to people who are struggling to understand is that Bitcoin is the MacDonald’s of crypto, and Ethereum is the Burger King, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a whole lot of other great burger places to choose from.

Trading Crypto Doesn’t Necessarily Make Your Information Vulnerable

There has long been this myth around crypto that it is something a little…suspect. In large part, this perception comes from the fact that it can be a little difficult to explain to a total novice without using a lot of jargon. It’s also because the idea of a decentralized currency does stand in stark contrast to the established way of doing things. And it’s also because crypto has been painted as something that shady people use to conduct transactions that they don’t want anyone to know about.

Of course, we all know that this is all nonsense. One of the easiest ways to impress upon people that trading crypto is fully transparent is by explaining that the way blockchain works is that there is nothing but transparency. There is a record of the way that it has been traded that cannot be hidden or falsified.

Where there does need to be some concession to the idea of vulnerability is in cybercrime. There have been several reports over the last several months of significant thefts of cryptocurrency and those are hard to ignore. But what is important here is context. Cybercrime rose drastically across the board over the course of the Coronavirus pandemic as criminals took advantage of the fact that a lot more people were spending a lot more time online, and that a lot of those people might not have the best security set-up or know how to protect themselves. We will almost certainly see a lot of big leaps forward in cybersecurity over the next several months as companies pour their resources into protecting their assets, but for now it’s still very important that anyone conducting financial transactions or trading online take steps to protect their information and their money.

It’s Not Just About Trading Anymore

As crypto technology continues to grow and develop, the avenues of possibility continue to become more and more exciting. A lot of people still have a very narrow view of crypto’s purpose. They think that it’s purely a currency used for being and selling. But a decentralized form of currency also has decentralized finance options. One of the buzziest new topics that has really come to the forefront over the last view months is this idea of yield farming.

One of the reasons why this has become quite so popular is because of the way that people who trade in crypto can borrow or loan with so much less hassle on crypto platforms. As long as you have a crypto stake, you can borrow liquid currency because you have the digital assets to back it up. All you need in order to borrow is proof of that, and you don’t need any forms of identification, address of guarantors. Your crypto is good enough. These lending pools offer smart contracts, but it’s non-custodial so you don’t need to give your digital assets to anyone. Some platforms are offering tokens to entice traders to borrow and loan with them, and becoming a lender is a great way to grow your digital asset portfolio. Unagii has been developing software to help you manage your yield with ease and expertise.

Cryptocurrency Is Still Not Going Anywhere

As we all know, one of the absolute most frustrating misconceptions about cryptocurrency is still this idea that it is just a flash in the pan. That, for whatever reason, something will break, and everyone will just wake up from whatever this fever dream is and go back to normal. The volatility of the crypto market is the easiest thing for these naysayers to point to, but if you want to help someone understand why crypto is not going anywhere (still), then there are a number of different things that you can point to.

You can point them towards the fact that Morgan Stanley recently started allowing its high value clients to use cryptocurrencies, and that Goldman Sachs is working on a new crypto trading team. You can point them towards the fact that PayPal, a platform that is renowned for its stability and security, has started allowing its users to trade crypto (with some conditions, in fairness, but it’s there). You can point them towards the number of businesses, whether they are car dealerships or online craft and hobby stores, which are allowing their customers to pay in Bitcoin. Now, governments around the world are still trying to figure out exactly where they stand on crypto and whether they should start introducing more regulations, but the idea that they would crack down with a ban seems extremely unlikely. We talked at the start about how crypto has been going mainstream for the last several years. That is not going to change anytime soon.