The Thin Line Between Adoption and Assimilation, Jantine Derksen, Distill | ETHSofia 2025

[music] So thank you first for the introduction. I will also give a small introduction myself. Um so yeah good day to everyone. My name is Yantina. Thank you.

I hope I hope everyone hears me. Uh [snorts] my name is Yantina. I'm working uh for the past years for different um blockchain protocols. Um and one thing I would like to to focus on today is actually the importance of telling the story um about what we are actually doing. Um I recently started a podcast distilled distilled.

Um, and for this podcast I realized that although we intrinsically know why we're building, the stories out there are not always reflecting uh reflecting this correctly. Um, as you can see in my my first slide, um, this is not from the blockchain world. Once Jamie Oliver published his uh his version of a Spanish bellia, he put in chicken tights and chizo and uh, storm was born. Um basically as you can see someone kindly asked him to remove the chiso. They didn't want to negotiate with terrorists.

So my first thing that of course I want to start off with when you tell a story say it correctly. But that's actually not what my talk will be covering. I think this is the basis of every story the facts. So I would like to dive in on one of the topics within crypto. um because basically we could analyze them all but I just decided to talk about one just to tell you a little bit what we are taking in account and what we are not taking in account.

So if we're looking at non-custodial ownership this is something that within the crypto scene we all say this is actually something very important important not your keys not your crypto. However, in the real world, we actually realizing that a lot of people that are not familiar with blockchain technology, they have difficult difficulties with actually the non-custodial nature of crypto. There's a lot of friction. So, what we want to avoid is that because there's this friction, people go back actually to the custodial by default and actually prefer the user convenience of custodial solutions. The logic of self-custod uh self-custody is not that difficult.

We have the opaque institutions and we actually favor transparent rule-based verifiable systems where there are not or just a few intermediaries in the process because yeah we all know in crypto we are trying to remove the middleman. So what we see in crypto is that there's a lot of attention to reduce actually this friction and focus a lot on the user experience and the tech. Now there are a lot of technological advancements like also in this conference you can see there's a lot of talk about account obstruction and a lot of ways that people actually feel more safe in order to uh start a wallet have social recovery multi-sec approvals all kinds of things to make people feel a little bit more safe in the space. However, what you can see in my my presentation is that I think there is still though an elephant in the room. So, I'm sure that everyone in crypto is familiar with this uh index.

This is the fear and greed index. Basically, this is like the sentiment of people towards whether crypto goes up or down. like are we in a fearbased market or are we in a greedy market. However, I would like to focus on another fear and that's actually basically the fear and adoption index. Because when we're talking about fear, it's not only if the markets will go down, but if we look at self-custody, it's actually something way more personal.

What if I lose my keys? Maybe the market goes up, but I might be losing all of my access to all of my crypto. And this is actually the bottom line. A lot of people, they don't dare to go into cryp crypto because change is scary. It isn't tech.

It's actually basically a psychological barrier that keeps a lot of people away from something that you could actually argue is a natural state. Um, so why do I say it's a natural state? Change is heavily correlated with fear. Here you see uh not a very motivational picture of a early 19th century train. People were very afraid to get into a train because they first were thinking that maybe their organs couldn't survive it and women were even afraid to becoming infertile.

Nowadays actually no one blinks an eye before they get into a train. So something is solved there. So basically what I would like to say is that within crypto we're focusing a lot on the friction of onboarding users by giving them a lot of smart like headbased decisions. And this is something that is correct. We should remove the friction on a mind point of view but we should also think about the emotions that people have when things are new.

And then there you have to think about stories because when something is new, you need to rely upon what people are telling you. This is a process called sense making. So if persons are telling you that you have a 12word phrase that you need to remember, maybe you panic, maybe you get scared because you are like, how am I ever going to remember this? Where am I going to keep this safe? And these are all fears that are actually based in a truthful situation because we all know that we can lose things.

So it is very important for us to actually focus upon these fears. Now of course we can say okay maybe this custodial idea isn't that bad them if everyone is afraid. But let's actually look at it from another perspective. If you would buy a house and the real estate agent would say, "Perfect. This is now your house.

However, I will control. I will keep it safe if you can enter your house." So all the time when you want to enter your house, you send me a message and I approve that you can enter. This sounds of course insane. Why would you give your key to the real estate agent?

Why wouldn't you just have your own keys? Well, and that is actually what is happening today in today's financial institutions. When people have money, they put it on the bank. And if you would ask in your surroundings, like I assume that all of the people here in the audience, they are familiar with how money works. However, if you would ask a lot of people, is the money in your bank?

Is it yours? A lot of people would choose a yes because it's in your account. It's your name is above it. However, the real answer what you can see here is that money is not yours. It's basically the bank is the custodian of the money and they have an outstanding depth towards you.

So, what you can see here it's um it's a it's a small uh message from the Bitcoin community saying that my bank notified me that the transaction was approved today. My Bitcoin wallet notified me that the transaction was confirmed. And I think this is something very important to remember that I told you in the in the previous slide. It is not about whether change is scary and new. It's also about the story because basically what we are asking for people to hold their own keys would actually be a situation that is not scary and new.

It should actually be the normal if we would present banks the way they work as a new phenomenon now to people. What if someone is guarding the money that you put in it but at the same time it will not be your money anymore and they can distribute it to others. Would you agree that sounds actually pretty scary but it's the norm of today? And that's why it's very important that when we talk about crypto that we realize that a lot of fear although it makes sense it also doesn't make sense because the norm is established by the stories that we create and the trust that we create around it. So going back to the first slide we saw Jamie Oliver creating his version of a Spanish palia there.

He said, "Here's my palia with the chorizo inside." And people got upset. I would like to assume that Jamie Oliver was not out there to destroy Pelia. I am sure that he loves Spanish food. I am sure coming from the UK that he was inspired by Spanish food and that he just wanted to give his own twist to it.

Even so, people got upset. Don't touch the pelia. Now for crypto we are in a different situation. We are not presenting Pelia to the world. We're basically presenting an alternative system to the world that doesn't always go well with the existing systems that are out there.

A very good example of a of an institute that is being challenged by the um arrival of blockchain technology is for example the central bank in this case the European Central Bank. They of course were custodians. They were middlemen in an old process of the banking system. Now what is happening is that a lot of people because it are like old institutes put a lot of trust in what is being said by these institutions. I selected here two articles, one of 2022 and one of 2024 where they basically reflect as the blog of the European Central Bank on Bitcoin.

If we look at 2022, we see that they call it Bitcoin's last stand. They're writing in the article that Bitcoin is rarely used for legal transactions. And basically they're painting a picture that you could lose all your money in this volatile asset that is probably actually about to disappear. And you would say, okay, 2022, maybe it was really that they were afraid that this was not a reliable technology. But even if we go back just one year ago, there we have it again.

Bitcoin, the naked emperor's new clothes. And there I quote, "Bitcoin has failed on the promise to be a global decentralized digital currency. Instead, it is being used for illicit transactions. The latest approval of an ETF doesn't change the fact that Bitcoin is not suitable as means of payment or as an investment." So interesting.

What they are actually trying to do here is to give you information that makes you afraid. It is used for illicit transactions. Okay. So they went a little bit more easy on Bitcoin from it's rarely used for legal transactions towards it's used for illicit transactions. Maybe because the first statement is just false.

This is misinformation. Bitcoin isn't rarely used for legal transactions. Even you could claim the opposite which is true. The majority of the transactions are legal. However, in fiat money, there is way more criminal money than in Bitcoin because it's of course a transparent technology.

It's actually not a good technology uh for for criminal usage. However, what I'm trying to show with this information here is that we are not dealing here with Jamie Olivers that just want to give their twist or want to experiment with it. We're actually dealing with people that know that change is scary and that are trying to fuel the fear. So the title of this whole talk is set the story right. Set set the story straight.

Sorry. I would like to just get a few key takes from the audience from this talk. One thing is counter misinformation. We're still in a world where they are trying to actually play on the emotional feeling that people have towards change and they are will try to say that this technology is scary but be always factual when they are talking about it even when it's a big institute. What I what I should also say what I think is so interesting is that also we don't have to feel that this institute just because they are there that they are more important than the industry the whole crypto industry that is trying to reach the position of let's say mass adoption or of people taking it serious.

one of the co-authors of the article that I just showed you. He last week got invited to I will not call names but to a big crypto conference and he was announced as we are honored to give him the stage and this for me always feels a bit strange like is the crypto scene themsself now impressed by the institutes that we are battling and this is also why I think it's very important for us to keep our story straight. We need to educate people about core concepts. We shouldn't be impressed by old institutes trying to battle us because nothing is risk free but change is worth it. So I would like to stop with the like end this talk with a small meme that you see here.

It's not only that we talk about crypto but it's also that we talk about the values that belong to it. So of course lately it's very dominated by everything that is happening in the US. There's a lot of big talk happening. It's of course nice that it's on the agenda but let your values talk. Um set the agenda, talk about what matters.

Thank you so much. And for anyone that is interested in talking about what matters, um, like I said before, I have a podcast, distilled.fm. If you if you think you have something to say, please reach out to me. [music]

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Heat.