Crypto: Beyond the ‘AOL Era’
Imagine crypto right now like the internet back in the late 90s – think “America Online” (AOL) days. According to Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, that’s where we’re at: a bit clunky, kinda technical, with not a ton you can actually *do* with it, and everything just feels… slow, like dial-up.
In a chat with Cointelegraph, Nailwal pointed out some key things that need to get better to make crypto easier for everyone. He’s talking about simple ways to get your regular money into crypto and back out again, secure ways to keep your crypto safe (even if you lose your keys!), and even crypto wallets built right into your phone.
“Think back to the dial-up days of the internet,” he said. “Even just getting online was a whole thing – you practically needed to be a tech whiz to connect! That’s still kind of where we are with crypto.”
“Yeah, we’re probably still hanging out in 1998 in crypto years,” the Polygon founder added. “It’s going to take at least another 10 to 15 years before we really see crypto live up to its full potential.”
Sure, AOL felt revolutionary back then, but it was pretty basic and not exactly user-friendly. Source: PC Magazine
Remember, it took the internet a good 30 to 40 years to become as widespread as it is today. In the beginning, it was pretty limited. Back in the late 90s, the AOL internet era was mostly about sending emails and doing some basic web browsing. Now? The internet is basically the backbone of the entire global economy.
Nailwal thinks crypto is on a similar path. Right now, he says, the main focus in crypto is on money stuff, especially folks trying to make a quick buck by trading.
But, he believes that once these financial uses are more mature and widely used, crypto will branch out into all sorts of other areas – things like social media that’s not controlled by big companies, gaming, and all kinds of specialized industries.
Related: Security concerns slow crypto payment adoption worldwide — Survey
Being in crypto today is being early to the party
Nailwal even pointed out that when it comes to the most basic thing you can do with cryptocurrencies – financial transactions – we’re still not really there yet.
A report from Bitcoin financial services company River, from February 2025, revealed that only about 4% of people around the world actually own Bitcoin – and that’s Bitcoin! It’s the original crypto, the biggest one, and probably the most well-known.
How Bitcoin is being adopted over time. Source: River
In fact, the report estimates that Bitcoin is only about 3% of the way to being fully adopted when you consider big institutions getting involved, the total number of people who *could* use it, and how it might fit into investment portfolios.
This really small number of Bitcoin owners just shows that crypto still has a long way to go before it’s truly mainstream. It’s a sign that the whole crypto world is still in those very early “early adopter” stages.
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