Edinburgh taking to cryptocurrency world stage
Ido love when one gets a call from an excited friend or family member who just cannot wait to tell you something fabulous. And this week, I got one of those calls.
My friend Kris is a big cryptocurrency dude, who studies it, invests in it and listens to at least one podcast a day on Bitcoin or some other macroeconomic phenomenon associated with it. Only this week, he wasn’t calling to tell me the latest news that the chief executive of Microstrategy, Michael Saylor, had bought another $50 million of Bitcoin and was about to take in $400m of debt into his company to buy even more.
Pretty big in the scheme of things. No, this week he saw a Scottish company leading the way in cryptocurrency. Strangely for my mate, his sighting of Scottish crypto was not on a computer screen, crypto exchange, blog or podcast, which is where he is glued eight hours a day. No, this time it was on a billboard in the nation’s capital. He was ecstatic to say the last. “Bitcoin on a billboard in Edinburgh Jim!”. I had to find out more.
And while it seems I have been infatuated with cryptocurrency, macro-trends and anorak style behaviour as it pertains to the main American advocates and companies, like Kraken, Coinbase and Blockfi, I have missed a rising star right under my nose here in Scotland. That company on the billboard was Zumo. And they quite rightly have their name up in lights as they are pioneering cryptographic tech from their base in Edinburgh. And as all anoraks do, I downloaded the Zumo app and gave them a call.
Seeing a series of billboards across Edinburgh for Zumo and Bitcoin may appear a bit weird for many, but it is just the next step in adoption of cryptocurrency. Think of it like this. Twenty five years ago, a thing
called the web popped its head up. I recall buying my first real computer and learning “object oriented” programming. This while my mum and dad looked on perplexed at what the “internet” actually was and could do. Wind the clock forward and the web is now mainstream. We use it for almost everything: paying bills, ordering Christmas presents, searching for car insurance and finding love. Then cryptocurrency comes along.
And mums and dads are again looking on with discombobulated expressions on what this new money is. Well, that is why Zumo are billboarding Bitcoin. In their words, their “goal is to normalise cryptocurrency” in such a way that “your mum” can download the app and use it, all with voice in mind.
When I speak with my family members in their twenties, they already have crypto wallets on their phones. They understand the online application process, 12-word security phrases and the Google authenticator app. But, when I speak with my peers, they think it’s all gobbledygook and they shy away from it.
And this is where education and trust comes in with new tech. And Zumo have built their app around this. They wanted it to be easy to understand and secure so they could bring “the benefits of crypto to everyone”. I haven’t seen this approach before and we should be impressed that a Scottish based tech outfit have this clarity of thinking. Billboards are just the first step in a joined up marketing strategy.