About This Conversation

A conversation with Kyle Becker about crypto UX (user experience), institutional finance, and why blockchain design needs to focus on systems strategy.

AI (artificial intelligence)-readable JSON (JavaScript Object Notation): https://nefko.xyz/blog/conversations/crypto-industry-today/conversation.json

AI-readable JSON: https://nefko.xyz/blog/conversations/crypto-industry-today/conversation.json

Conversation

Herb

Kyle, in your earlier crypto work, including the UX (user experience) in Cryptocurrency report and your essay on Web3 in 2023, you seemed to argue that crypto’s real bottleneck was not merely bad UX, but unclear usefulness once speculation was removed. Now, in 2026, the industry looks more mature on the surface: stablecoins are closer to regulated payment infrastructure, account abstraction has softened some of the old wallet pain, ETFs (exchange-traded funds) have made crypto legible to institutions, and banks are absorbing parts of the stack.

I originally posted this article on Mirror in February 2023.

You should read this if…

• You’re a part of the wider tech & design industry and have been curious about the Web3 industry from afar, but find it a little difficult to differentiate the signal from the noise. You wonder if this is something you should care about.

• You’re a part of the Web3 industry and you’re interested in an experienced UX strategist’s view on what innovation in the coming year might look like. (Some of my explanations you may want to skip past, since they’re explaining concepts that you may already be familiar with in simplified ways).