Bridging the Trust Deficit to Move Crypto from Niche Market to Mainstream Adoption

The number of cryptocurrency users could exceed 900 million globally by the end of this year, if recent growth rates hold. Total market cap is well into the trillions of dollars, and is projected to keep increasing over the next five years.

Even so, crypto would remain a niche asset class rather than the currency of choice for most of the world’s 8 billion inhabitants. At this moment, the user penetration rate is barely 7%. So let’s be clear on what’s bogging down the pace at which people begin to accept crypto. Then let’s figure out what to do about it.

The first part is the easiest, because it boils down to one word: Trust.

Institutional investors have come to adopt crypto, signalling their acceptance by launching ETFs securitizing spot Bitcoin and Ether. But that’s not growing crypto’s wallet share – it’s cannibalizing it instead. Rather than going on DeFi apps to buy and sell digital currencies, everyday retail investors conduct transactions from their more familiar legacy brokerage accounts.

And that should be a wakeup call for the crypto space. At a time when the entire industry should be doing all it can to garner the trust of the average retail investor, many on the inside may be ignoring layers of baked-in complexity that make people yearn for the relative comfort of their stockbrokers’ apps. After all, familiarity fosters trust, while complexity often breeds doubt and skepticism.

Trust Deficit Prevents User Engagement

“Bridging the gap to mainstream adoption requires addressing a fundamental trust deficit,” says Brian Breslin, a senior executive at TELUS Digital, a global firm that integrates artificial intelligence and human agents to deliver seamless customer experiences for crypto. “The future of sustainable growth and mainstream crypto adoption hinges on a dedicated, industry-wide commitment to prioritizing the new, non-technical customer."

Breslin identifies three major contributors to this trust deficit:

These are all elements of the broader CX ecosystem – every bit as much as the user interface. Still, UI/UX friction points remain the most important of these factors, and CX for many crypto exchanges is fraught with non-intuitive processes. These result in:

Smoothing Out the Touchpoints

Every point at which new or potential users come into contact with the DeFi product is a point where the platform can lose them. That’s where a strong customer support presence comes in. The days when a static list of FAQs would suffice are long gone. Chatbots have their use cases, but they don’t comprehend the world the way humans do, and their lack of situational awareness can put people off. DeFi leaders need to understand one thing that traditional financial services providers have always understood: This is a people business.

“Often there's a gap between what a customer is actually experiencing on a crypto or digital assets platform and what the platform itself thinks is the experience it's delivering,” Breslin says. “So we look at what is the user journey, how can we improve the sentiment or the sense of trust at the different points of that journey.”

CX as the new trust infrastructure

This journey begins with onboarding, and the platform that loses its customers here is unlikely to ever get them to proceed – and almost certainly will never get them back. This isn’t a matter of an abandoned cart; this represents the evaporation of each prospect’s lifetime value.

Onboarding needs to be streamlined and rendered much more intuitive, and AI can help automate what had previously been manual processes. The first, and perhaps biggest hurdle for DeFi in this regard is the Know Your Client (KYC) process. Everyone who signs up must provide – and must be willing to provide – personal data and sometimes banking information. This must be documented by government-sanctioned photo ID, proof of address, biometric verification and a background check.

“The initial onboarding is hypercritical,” Breslin says, noting that 63% of potential customers abandon financial services apps at this point. “There's a lot of frustration when you're going through delays. So we look at that user journey through the KYC process. We bring in procedures to let the user know why there is a KYC process and that in itself builds trust. We also update the timeline so users can track their progress and see where they are in the journey.”

Even so, that’s just the beginning of the CX requirements. Proactive and transparent communications should be applied to security and privacy concerns, which will only become more critical as the new client becomes a more frequent user. This means having an accessible, knowledgeable customer support team and this is where AI can really make a difference. While AI- supported self-service should be an option, users should also have the choice to speak with a human agent. Backed by an AI-fueled knowledge base and next-best action engine, a human agent can give users the most up-to-date and authoritative answers and optimal suggestions with a personal touch.

“When it does get to the point that users need