Something that may be being forgotten in some ways, while it is being fully acknowledged in others.
The best way to introduce you to the Concept is the Current DeFi Liquidity Push. Part of DeFi is ensuring you can buy and sell the Tokens you are pulling out of the Smart Contract, the Unicorn Token is a good example to look at if you are not aware of the current situation.
But this Liquidity issue has existed for a while, Bitcoin started by being sold person to person then being sold on MtGOX which was an online exchange for "Magic the Gathering" playing cards, and you had to buy it through MoneyGram.
Then came all the modern exchanges.
But there continued to be an issue, the few first large exchanges started wanting $10,000 to list you, and most projects don't have that to start with and once they had it, it is maybe better spent on the project itself.
Which then created several more exchanges as some Projects became projects to create exchanges, and now there are thousands of exchanges.
But there was never a place that provided automatic Liquidity for Tokens.
If Cryptocurrency wants large scale adoption, the owner of a Pizza shop or Sandwhich shop should be able to get on some platform, create a Token Asset, and use it as a Coupon, or Concert Ticket, etc. This was originally an idea formed by the Bitshares Team, and it was implemented on the Bitshares Blockchain with the OpenLedger Platform. Anyone could pay about 1 BTC and make a Tokenized Asset that is automatically listed on OpenLedger, but 1 BTC is and always has been too high a bar to ask an average shop owner who is willing to try something new, to have to pay up front.
So OpenLedger Assets are basically all the same as the one called Brownie Points. There is an Asset you can find on CryptoFresh call Brownie Points, and that is basically what a Bitshares Asset is because the bar to entry is so high, so it is not a massively accessible platform. Not that no one should use it, but don't start there because it does cost too much unless they have changed the price.
Then there was the EXP (ETH Fork) Plan for TokenLab, where you make a Token on their ETH Chain and it is automatically available for Trade on Token Lab. They launched this a few years ago, but their Coin EXP was like $8 at the time (now far lower price) and the Tokens were $200 to make, so what could be called the Beta Test group never materialized because even that was too high a bar to entry. They have said they plan to launch a simplified Token Lab. If this had been cheaper, we might see Business Coupon Tokens on EXP Today.
Then Steem-Engine, a Platform that allows Tokens to be made and Automatically listed for Trade. But there has not really been a push to tell anyone how to use them as Tickets, etc, as originally Theorized and is probably the right way to understand them. They are like Concert Tickets, or Qausi-Stocks, etc. Around this time is when Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) became a thing and self listing for ERC20, etc.
And Poloni DEX is now allowing people to self List TRC10s. This is a DeFi push, and an expansion on what has been needed.
But there still need to be more platforms that are at their base like OpenLedger, but better GUI and maybe something like a Steem-Engine Smart Contract that operates like Proof of Liquidity for Poloniex or the Binance Token, but with the Steem-Engine Model where you can pay to create your own Smart Contract exchange Token, and maybe like 2% of all exchange fees go back to the Original Contract.
This is the kind of thing that will move Cryptocurrency into the World.
I do not think many people understand where we are on the Cryptocurrency timeline, but I think it is far to say Cryptocurrency has now existed for a Decade.
My favorite Roman Historian is Livy, because of his writings on Hannibal and his general perspective that Rome could be better.
"The state is suffering from two opposite vices, avarice and luxury; two plagues which, in the past, have been the ruin of every great empire." -Livy
But Roman History is verified now by reading all the different Ancient Historians, see where they agree, or disagree, or actually even attack each other, and from that determine which parts actually happened.
I hate to compare myself to Polybius at all because of his lack of faith, but I want to kind of explain where we are in a summary, but do it in the way Polybius describes here. I will also include links to posts I have written on Steemit with more info.
"I observe that while several modern writers deal with particular wars and certain matters connected with them, no one, as far as I am aware, has even attempted to inquire critically when and whence the general and comprehensive scheme of events originated and how it led up to the end. I therefore thought it quite necessary not to leave unnoticed or allow to pass into oblivion this the finest and most beneficent of the performances of Fortune. For though she is ever producing something new and ever playing a part in the lives of men, she has not in a single instance ever accomplished such a work, ever achieved such a triumph, as in our own times. We can no more hope to perceive this from histories dealing with particular events than to get at once a notion of the form of the whole world, its disposition and order, by visiting, each in turn, the most famous cities, or indeed by looking at separate plans of each: a result by no means likely. He indeed who believes that by studying isolated histories he can acquire a fairly just view of history as a whole, is, as it seems to me, much in the case of one, who, after having looked at the dissevered limbs of an animal once alive and beautiful, fancies he has been as good as an eyewitness of the creature itself in all its action and grace." -Polybius
Bitcoin was a Novel Transaction Network, unerrorable, there is no double spend, there is no adding an accidental 0 and creating money in a system, there is no central governing body issuing the currency, it comes from the Encrypted Blocks hashed by the Miners.
When I send you any amount of Coins from my address, it goes in a Block on the Blockchain with a bunch of other Transactions. Everyone's fees are added up, and that becomes the Miner reward, plus the Blockchain started with 50 Coins per Block that were released, and it halves every few years, so was 25, then 12.5 and may be or is coming up on 6.25. That makes them harder to get and the fees mean more as it gets lower, and they become more rare.
When it started, you could mine Bitcoin on your laptop, CPU mining, the more Processors your computer had, the better, so you wanted a Quad Core or more. People got thousands of Bitcoin that way, then some people made Mining software for Gaming Graphics Cards, GPUs, and those were overtaken by ASICs, which is a whole box of processors running 1 app. Butterfly Labs was first, then Antminer and others, then it just got crazy with mining farms with warehouses full.
This simply served to make it harder to mine, as more people come in the people with the most power get the most, but it was easier when Laptops were just competing.
So Litecoin was made, to allow Laptops again, then Feather Coin because Litecoin got ASICs. Then CryptoNight Algorithm and CryptoNotes stopped those, and made it where people could CPU mine again.
Then came Ethereum and in the background Bitshares had already happened, Bitshares had Assets and Ethereum had Tokens.
Then the ICO fad, make a Fancy Image with Stockphotos and photo shop and a few cartoon rocketships and graphs, or a plan for an app, and sell your Tokens directly to buyers.
Then real dApps started popping up on the ETH Blockchain, then the Bitshares team made Steemit.
Then a few other Tokens and Assets came along, but Steem-Engine is probably the next big one after that.
So dApps, Steemit, then STO Scot Bots.
So now I am thinking the next step is to make a bunch of Tokens that are rewarded to Miners, Karma Tokens, and Tokens that reward Discord and Telegram and other Social engagement, similar to APPICS but integrated in other Social Media instead of just Steemit. Like sign up and Tweet a hashtag for Tokens after either you get a like from other Token holders or however it would work. It could just be automatic for people because that would be best for Discord and Telegram, but maybe you get more with more likes.