The Involved, The Investor, The Miner - Who Benefits in the New Cryptocurrency Economy?

Increased activity within the cryptocurrency ecosystem within the past few weeks has given rise to many questions. The fallout of critical decisions has also raised questions as to who benefits or gets hurt as the crypto space develops.

Iconomi adviser on business model development, strategy and branding, Zenel Batagelj speaks to Cointelegraph on the three key segments involved in the new crypto economy.

Zenel Batagelj, Iconomi adviser

The key players

Batagelj says that there are three key segments involved in the new crypto economy. First, there are those directly involved in cryptocurrencies, who believe in the new world and have most of their assets within the economy, some of them even working on applications.

The second segment, according to Batagelj, are the early adopters, known as the investors who look for short and mid-term investment opportunities.

The third segment that Batagelj points out are the miners.

Characteristics of the segments

According to Batagelj, the first group, the involved, act as a tribe, with a highly developed value system and ethical standards, sharing the vision that they are building something new which is much better than what exists. Regarding ‘coins’ as investments, they are taking them as long-term investments and they are used to ‘up and downs.’

The DAO story is just one of the ‘downs’ already seen and they strongly believe the only direction is up.  In ‘investment’ terms they are willing to go for the greater good, also for the price of some small losses.

The second group, the investors, are different. Batagelj says that this particular group look at the whole picture from a short-term perspective, especially how to make maximum gains.

Batagelj says:

“The current situation is rather frustrating for them due to uncertainty, an extremely high level of  volatility, not understanding what is going on and abysmally bad, non-transparent communication among most of the  key players. In order to get closer to them it is evident that the new economy should correct in terms of communication with investors.”

Batagelj identifies the miners as a completely different group:

“The term used is actually very close to the old school mining industry: heat, sweating, a lot of computers - their world actually stinks. They are ex-gamers, hardware geeks, coders etc. It is fascinating how well they know what ROI means: buying value for money devices, and what to mine and what not to mine.”

Batagelj explains further that in the world of miners, all the coins are treated equally, similar to investors. The biggest difference is that they are not interested in ‘politics.’

That is confirmed by voting charts - the majority of them did not vote. As in everyday politics, most of them represent the ‘silent uninvolved majority’.

What the miners care about

Regarding the prevailing situation within Ethereum and its decision to fork, Batagelj says:

“From our research there are two messages relevant to the miners: stabilisation of the current situation, where what is more important for them is questionable. The DAO story or the falling of Bitcoin, and even more important ROI, what is there for them - promise them a bonus and they will go for it.”

Batagelj concludes that the most important finding is that these three key segments act on completely different principles i.e. value systems, but at the end of the day the investors are the ones who should be satisfied. It is in the interest of both. It has taken a long time to bring them to the new economy, and their bad experience will slow down its development