I have an even harder time seeing any of those people who invest in bitoin using their coins for purchases.
I'm pretty sure whatever "newbie guides" exist out there purposely lead people to this awful state.
Using "crypto" to abbreviate "cryptocurrency" causes a lot of confusion, as the "crypto" in "cryptocurrency" was already an abbreviation; "cryptocurrency" is short for "cryptographic currency."
People who know nothing about cryptography or even that cryptocurrency uses cryptography get confused if they are looking for information about cryptocurrencies and instead find more general purpose resources on cryptography (like https://crypto.stackexchange.com/ or https://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/).
I know that this is a losing battle, like getting people to stop using "wiki" as an abbreviation for Wikipedia (which is just one out of many wikis), but I figure that as long as we're talking about people not knowing much but investing in it anyhow, I really encourage everyone to stop using "crypto" as an abbreviation for "cryptocurrency."
Now a similar population at large has decided the new usage rules. It's normal, it's just evolution of the English language. By this point, "crypto" is indeed widely used as a short term for Cryptocurrencies also.
People who know nothing about things are going to get confused either way. The society can't form every single rule just so every person who doesn't know anything will have a clear mind. If they want to learn something, they will. And learning that "crypto" can mean two things, in a language where it's already commonplace for terms to mean different things in different areas - is not a huge thing.
Yes, this is why I say that I know this is a losing battle.
I mostly care about it in the context of technical forums like Hacker News. While the word may have a different meaning for the population at large, when you're having a discussion on a technical forum you should generally try to learn how words are used in that context.
This is somewhat like the different meanings for the word "theory" in a scientific context and in general use. In general use, "theory" means an idea that may not yet have been tested or proven, somewhere around the meaning of "idea", "hunch", or "hypothesis", while in a scientific context "theory" indicates something that has been tested successfully and is well accepted.
While the use of "theory" in the broader sense is well accepted in general use, using it in that sense in a discussion about scientific theories is confusing; so if someone does that in such a discussion, I am likely to point out the stronger meaning of the word in scientific usage.
So likewise, while "crypto" as an abbreviation of "cryptocurrency" is already fairly widespread (though I think still niche enough that there's a tiny chance a concerted effort could change usage patterns), I at least want to make sure that folks getting involved in technical discussions are made aware of the earlier definition of "crypto" and are made aware of the confusion that can be caused.
We are definitely in a very hype driven cryptocurrency bubble right now, and there are a lot of naive folks who are probably going to lose money to it.
And yet somehow, we haven't really managed to make any cryptocurrencies an actual, widely accepted, payment alternative, for anyone other than a few people with special circumstances (government restrictions on currency exchange, criminals demanding ransoms, funding organizations that governments are trying to shut down) or people who are fairly technically competent.
There's a chance the lightning network could be the last piece of the puzzle to make cryptocurrencies actually usable for payment, though even still, I have a hard time seeing most places wanting to accept payment in an asset as volatile as Bitcoin.
Or maybe we'll see a coin backed by fiat currency and real, regulated banks on Stellar, where you don't have nearly the same scalability issues nor gigawatts of power wasted just to try to solve Sybil attacks. If you have a coin backed by fiat currency, and low transaction costs, businesses are a lot more likely to accept it as payment as most of their expenses, taxes, debts, and so on are in the local fiat currency rather than than in any cryptocurrency.