Here’s Some Cryptocurrency. Now Please Use It. -- NYT

That inevitable phase in the introduction of a new cryptocurrency in which you have to bribe people to actually use it for its ostensible function...

"Ripple, a San Francisco company that is rolling in money thanks to last year’s run-up in the value of cryptocurrencies, was behind the giveaways. And it has quietly become one of the most valuable start-ups of the last decade thanks to the value of XRP, the digital token its founders created six years ago.

Now comes the hard part: persuading people to use XRP for something other than speculative trading. It is an issue facing most of the still-young cryptocurrency industry. Digital tokens like Bitcoin and its many imitators (like XRP) were designed to make electronic transactions of all sorts easier. But today almost no transactions are happening, other than on virtual currency exchanges where people bet on their price."

Here’s Some Cryptocurrency. Now Please Use It. -- NYT