120. Why Crypto Still Sucks And How It’s Holding Us Back

Why can't I get my assets out? I've got like three different ledges. I'm rotating my ledges all through. It's going fail, fail, fail. I can't get my money out. I'm starting to get sweaty palms. What on earth is going on?

Should be instant. Turns out, Ben, it's not instant. So wait, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour, two hours, three hours, four hours. And then the, the time is going down. Some pleb in his basement's released a meme coin just chewing up all the available space and people are paying insane gas fees to get into this smart contract to mid Sonic Inu Pepe Donald Trump Coin. Is this really the future, Ben? And I just picture spongebob where he's like a chicken going just like crypto is the future.

Welcome back to another episode of the Ben and Bergs Podcast. I'm Ben, your favorite high school dropout and founder of collective shift, alongside Ms. Burgs, your favorite MBA and CEO of Collective Shift. Join us as we bring you world class crypto research and strategies to help you dominate this crypto bull market, as well as a behind the scenes view of us scaling a fully remote subscription research business in Australia. And this episode, Burgs, I'm really looking forward to because you and I have both been degenerating probably a little bit too much over the last few weeks and I came to a realization that we've had for a long time that was really solidified that crypto products and the user experience of crypto is absolutely horrendous. It is shitful at best. And you and I live in this space. I mean, I've been full time in crypto now for seven years and it is just appalling how bad and how difficult it actually is to get in and utilize crypto products. Now how this came about was we were airdrop farming as we, you know, as, as us DJ do. We were, you know, looking at a new airdrop that we're trying to farm on the Eigen layer. I get up early. Bergs has sort of been trying to get some eth to get it sorted. You know, he's in wa. He was three hours early earlier. I get up, try and do it and I'm going to walk through the process later because it was just, it was horrendous and, and I finally got it done. Then I tweeted about it and I'm like, right, you know, GM Eigenlayer, if you know, you know, get involved. And then Bergs wakes up and the FOMO kicked in. Berg's like, shit, I need to get on this. Bergs, talk us through the disaster that was trying to like, get it done on your end because.

Oh, let me frame this up so I'm three hours. I'm not three hours ahead of you, I'm three hours behind you, mate.

This is why I get all those Messages at bloody 2am, mate.

It's all making sense now.

Yeah. So Matt, one of our absolute legends, head of research at Collective Shift, he puts up a post and he's like, these are the three moonshots. Because we've been talking about it internally, we've got our portfolio sorted, we've got our strategies done, but there's opportunity, there's some moonshots there to be made. Yeah.

And then.

So. So actually, no, sorry, this is before the moonshots post. This was the airdrop farming post. So all, all. Quite a few in the team have got this Solana airdrop, right? They got judo and they ended up getting like, I don't know, 30k USD, 15k USD, like a decent amount of money. Quite a few of us missed out. We're not into like Solana airdrop farming. We don't do all that stuff. But then Matt posts and he goes, hey, here's a super easy one for you. All you need to do is go over to this website, press a button, it'll give you something and then restate the something. Done. So I wake up and I see Ben's Twitter post and he's like, oh, I've literally just done this at the airport. I'm like, oh, no. And it's like the last day that I could do it to get all of the bonuses. And I'm. I'm actually feeling crook as well. I got a virus from the little one. So I go and I talk to the missus, right? And I'm like, oh, look, I can't be bothered doing this. But there's this potential. This is. She's like, just do it. Think about in the future where everyone in your team is going to be celebrating about the airdrop that they got and you're going to be sitting there crying because you're a loser and you didn't spend 10 minutes doing it, you know? Yeah.

You would have been like, you'll be like, exactly.

She told me that. I'm like.

And I knew she was right. It just hit my soul. So I'm like, fine, crack out the hardware wallet, let's go. All right, so I'm gonna do a very simple Thing, I take a small bit of Ethereum, send it over, do a couple of transactions. Done. All right. So I don't want any tax burden. So what do I do? I take a little bit of money from my bank and I send it across to my exchange via Osco. Should be instant. Turns out, Ben, it's not instant. Oh, by the way. No, no, no. It doesn't even start. Then it doesn't.

I'm going to jump in because you did this previously when you tried to buy Bitcoin and this exchange, I told you you need to GTFO and so stuck with it.

So that was because I was transferring from a joint account and the names didn't match. Right. So what I did this time, I did Osco from one account to another one that is only in my name. Brilliant. Instant transfer, bank to bank. Love it. But then I did the one from my name to my exchange and doesn't show up in. So wait, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, half an hour, 2 hours, 3 hours, 4 hours. And then the. The time is going down. You have two hours left. One hour left. Oh, no. I gotta get in. I gotta get in. Okay, so the money doesn't come across. And I'm like, look, it'll show up at some point in time. I'll just use my old ETH that I had in a wallet. So I get that eighth. And look, I'm very. I like my digital hygiene, I like my security. So I didn't use it from that specific wallet. I transferred it to another address. So a clean address because I'm interacting with the contract. Brilliant. That happened on chain. Cost me like five bucks. Great. Transfer my money across. All right, so that part's done. And I tried to, like, interact with. That was done from my hardware wallet. Right. With the software, first of all, had to update the software of the hardware wallet, then had to update the firmware of the hardware wallet, and then it went across. Okay, great, done. Then I tried to connect to the site, connect it, put the money in. Great, everything's open using MetaMask. And then have to sign with my hardware wallet. Can't connect.

I'm like, what are you talking about? I literally just use this.

So you connect your ledger to your metamask. Is that how you did it?

Yeah. And then you know how you go to the screen where you have to approve it, Right. And it's like, no, it doesn't work. And I'm like, googling it. And I'm like, it's literally saying it can find it. And I click yes, it's found it, but then it won't go to export my public key. And I'm like, why? So I start Googling it. All these people having problems. There's always Reddit threads and like all this, like stack overflow and everything. Eventually get a route to, I need to install a bridge. So I've installed the bridge, ready, restarted my PC and it's working. So it finally connects and I go through and I press send on the transaction. Gas fees are like 30, 40 bucks USD. Great, send it through. And my PC just dies. It just freezes. And I'm like, what the hell? I'm like, what do I do? Like my, my keyboard and mouse are on and my hardware while I still display, but my computer's frozen and my computer just restarts. And I was like, oh my God, what is going on? So I go back here and then.

Those thoughts about those, those anxious thoughts, oh my God, I've signed my life away. Oh, I'm in a scam. I've got no money. It's taking everything.

Oh, mate, mate. So then I go back in and I check in the wallet and it just says pending. And I'm like, okay, it's a stuck transaction, you know, it's. It obviously hasn't gone through, so go and check on the block explorer. And it's gone through and I'm like, what? So successful on the blockchain, which is the source of truth. Reconnect my wallet to this. Yes, reconnect my wallet to the site. And it shows that it's made the trade, but it's still pending in Metamask, and I can't do a subsequent transaction in Metamask till I get rid of that. So then I have to Google it and I have to work out how to clear the history and transactions in Metamask. So I end up doing that, right? Absolute nightmare, right? Then I had to reset my wallet and I have to run additional transactions. So I'm trying to interact with this contract, can't find it again, eventually finds it. I end up paying $70 in gas fees. It takes me something that should have taken five minutes. Took me an hour and a half towards the end, I wasn't even checking the contract address. My stuff. I just take all my money. I don't care. I got to get in for this airdrop. Get in. Turns out I missed the window. Didn't get the extra bonus that you got.

And mate, I was so ropeable. I was ready if my hardware wallet had more heft to it, like A brick. I would have thrown it through the window. It was that disgusting.

And.

And then so I'm like, I look through the transactions, go through there, like pending, dropped, failed. And I paid for it even though it's failed. And I'm like, yeah, that's fantastic. Then I ran out of bloody eth. So to a gas, I had to send more eth across. Oh my God, it was just a nightmare. And then like I had some over on Arbitrum, I'm like, fine. I got the hardware wallet out. I've had some tokens locked up for a while in like Atlas mine, which is about to blow up. So went over there, clicked in, literally clicked, okay, done. The transaction was like 20 cents unlocked, all that stuff. And it was just done. And like, that was a really good experience. But everything leading up to that is like, how do normal people even do this?

They can't mate. So because I had an experience. So I woke up. This is before you woke up. Usual behind me, not in front of me. And. And I woke up, was ready to go. The. The window opened, I loaded up. Ethan, my metamask the night before, ready to rumble. Everything's good. Night before, wake up, ready to go. Click my MetaMask login. Nothing would. Nothing would load. It was just pending loading. Nothing. My tokens wouldn't show up. It just. Everything just disappeared. And I sort of was looking at my. Okay, so logged out, crossed off Chrome, reopened it. Same thing, the going on. So I'm doing the same thing. I'm now I'm in like stack overflow and Reddit forums from 2014, trying to figure out like, why am I metamask my load. Nothing will come up. So then I opened up a new browser, open up Safari. Wait, MetaMask doesn't work with Safari. Okay, I need to get this other browser that won't work, won't download. I'm on hotel WI fi, right? That doesn't work. So then went into MetaMask. I'm like, I'm gonna have to uninstall this. Well, I better make sure I've got my right seed seed phrase words. So resave my seed phrase words for both our accounts, saved it, uninstalled it, restart it, downloaded it, then it was a fail with a download, the download wouldn't work. Finally got that to work after restarting my computer, re uploaded my seed phrase keys, which is kind of a scary thing in a sense. Like if these words don't work for whatever reason, like, I've just lost all of my. You know, assets like, amazing.

That ended up working, got through and was able to stake my, my, my SW8. But this whole process and the fact that this is the cutting edge software that we have right now is just beyond me about how bad it is to use. And not even just Metamask, right? We recently had Ledger, who has now had multiple malicious attacks on Ledger this year. The most recent one was Ledger Connect, which, mind you, they recently said the way that happened was a previous employee that doesn't even work at Ledger anymore had their computer hacked, which then uploaded some sort of, you know, virus malware into a firmware update for Ledger Connect. Like, how on earth does that even happen?

Like, that's. Yeah, yeah. Businesses are very poor at deprovisioning people. You see that kind of thing all the time. And mate, how much of a pleb do you feel like, where you have to redo your seed phrase and you're hoping and praying and you're doing it like letter by letter on your ledger, mate. And then like, you know why this is the exact reason why I didn't want to do this? Because doing these kind of things is such a punishment. It's like, oh, my God, it is the worst ever.

Takes five, 10 minutes.

No.

So the other night I was, I was getting money off my ledger to send over to my Metamask, right? And on, on my ledger, I've got, you know, I've got some of our company assets, I've got most of my personal assets. So I go to transfer some of my assets out of my personal account over with my ledger plugged in, and it's just going, transaction failed. Just come out failed with like an error code. And it's. And it. And the only button I have is to save the logs. So I'm like, what does that mean? Click save logs. And it just downloads this, like, text file. I'm like, oh, cool, thanks, Ledger. What the I'm doing with that? Like, you know, just a bunch of like, saved error logs. Like, why can't I get my assets out? So I've got like three different ledges. I'm rotating my ledges all through. It's going fail, fail, fail. I can't get my money out. I'm like, what the. Like, I'm starting to get a little bit like, sweaty palms. Like, what on earth is going on? Like, have I got the wrong ledger? Like, what is going on? Turns out I had, I had some of my personal money that was saved under different seed phrases. So the access to get into that capital was with another ledger that I didn't have. So to restore another ledger of mine with seed, seed phrases that were on a different device onto that device. So I get the money out. Finally that worked. But then the transaction wouldn't show up on my ledger. It. It was like two or three hours. It wasn't even showing up on the blockchain or ledger that the money had come out. But then I tried to redo the transaction and then that was the same error transaction already occurred. I'm like, what the is going on? Like, slam the computer shut, cracked the shits, went to bed. I'm like, right, I've either lost all my money or like ledgers just fucked. Woke up in the morning and the money just arrived on my metamask. So I'm like, this whole thing is just a joke.

And you go to do a transaction and gas fees like $5. Great, amazing. You go to press okay, on the transaction hasn't gone through. Why there's no confirmations.

You go there.

Chance of success, 70%. Why? Oh, some pleb in his basements released a meme coin that's just chewing up all the available space and people paying insane gas fees to get into this smart contract to Met like to mid Sonic Inu Pepe Donald Trump coin. You're like, oh my God, is this really what the world we live in, is this really the future? Ben and I just picture. I picture SpongeBob where he's like a chicken going just like crypto is the future.

Like.

Even at this event I went to last night, we're there and everyone just like, you know, I've got guys next to me while the presentation was on, like loading up like bonk bot on leverage to try and get their bonk tokens. Oh my God, it was the most degenerate thing.

We are in the future. Like this is what. You know, none of this shit is as any fundamental value. And this is the. This is the world we live in now.

The silver lining here and the reason why we do this is a thing called an accessibility discount.

Mate, isn't it so true. Do you want to talk us through this?

I'm just going to say once, once more so that listens at the back can listen to this. Accessibility discount. This is a word that. Oh, our head of research, Matt come up with other night and he said it, you know, wow, we did. I get excited. Never heard of this terminology before, but it encompasses crypto in its current form. Accessibility discounts means that you get access to these tokens to these projects to this industry at a discount because of how hard it is to get access to for 99% of people. They have no idea what we're talking about. And even the people that are in crypto struggle to get into some of these assets. So, like, this is the reason why we're so bullish on the space, because of the timing. We're able to front run so many of the bigger guys, so many of the bankers, so many of the institutions, because this stuff is not easily accessible for big money. It's not accessible for like everyday people. Like, you have to live in this space and really, truly understand it and have a trusted community and leaders and educators around you to even know what on earth you're doing. Otherwise you're going to lose everything or you're going to get scammed or like, you know, something bad will happen. And that's why most people just look at it and just run away.

That's exactly right. And an analogy is like in real estate, right? Like you see a house on a block, anyone can buy that, hold it and then sell it. But if you're able to renovate it or subdivide it, or, you know, see a really strange block and put an amazing house on there, because you've got the skills, you'll be paid a premium. We are doing these crazy things and we will be paid a premium. Even just simple things like buying Bitcoin and Ethereum. Even though you can go onto an exchange and do that, the majority of people don't because it's confusing. They don't understand it. Rich people can't get in, which is why they need ETFs for the way that they buy and compliance that they require. You will be paid significant dividends because of this accessibility discount.

Yeah, spot on, mate. And who knows how long it's going to take until a lot of this stuff's fixed. So until then, we've got a long way to go in terms of being able to actually onboard users into this space and a long way to go before we really get new huge inflows. But this is like this sort of stuff. You start to see why the ETFs are important, because.

No one in their right mind will be trying to do what we do with large amounts of money like that don't have a tech or crypto background. And that's why the ETFs is so important, because that's a vehicle that people can get access really easily.

That's right. And if you and I who work in crypto think it's a punish and have heart attacks when we're doing it. Even though we know we're doing the right thing. That tells you something about where the space is and how much opportunity is there.

Yeah, I agree. Look, we're wrapping up there, guys. We'd love to hear your. Your experiences in crypto. Do you agree with us? Do you have better experiences? Is there better software out there? What are the sort of leading players in the space? We'd love to hear from you if you're, you know, using other. Other wallets and obviously we're constantly testing these out and doing research, but we haven't, you know, haven't seen anyone really killing the space. So let us know if you've got any other friends in crypto that you think they'd find value in this episode. We'd love for you to share it with them. It's how we grow the podcast coming to you each and every week, twice a week. And, you know, we'll see you hopefully, the next episode when things are a little bit easier in Crypto.

Absolutely. Thanks, champions.