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Let's address the ๐™—๐™ž๐™œ๐™œ๐™š๐™จ๐™ฉ ๐™›๐™š๐™–๐™ง๐™จ in ๐™—๐™ก๐™ค๐™˜๐™ ๐™˜๐™๐™–๐™ž๐™ฃ and ๐™˜๐™ง๐™ฎ๐™ฅ๐™ฉ๐™ค๐™˜๐™ช๐™ง๐™ง๐™š๐™ฃ๐™˜๐™ž๐™š๐™จ that ๐™จ๐™˜๐™–๐™งe newbies away

Environmental concerns have upset a lot of people and rightly so. We only get one Earth to protect. However, this is a known issue with blockchain technology and is not news. People have been working on this and fixes already exist as Level 2 solutions (addons for blockchain) and fundamental changes to the blockchains themselves. Proof of Work is a security paradigm that requires lots of electricity. Proof of Stake has been created to solve this. The fixes are both here and coming. When your car isn't running well you don't throw it away, you fix it.

Governmental regulation is coming and this has scared people into selling their cryptocurrencies. Anyone who has been around for a while already expects this. Of course taxes must be paid. Of course we don't want criminals to freely exchange money on blockchain. Governmental involvement has always been expected and is welcome. Our goal is to work together to make the systems better and avoid the negatives that have broken traditional systems. This will require conscientious effort. But we're up to the challenge and expect it.

China might ban mining. Well, wouldn't that be nice! Blockchain is a global technology and the world participates. If China doesn't mine then some other country will. Let's hope it's a nice country! Also, China has more specifically banned mining with coal energy and who wants to burn coal anyway? I support China if they want to ban coal burning and pollution. Again, Proof of Work consumes too much energy and better solutions are going to address this.

Now, the final takeaway. While scared people sell off their cryptocurrencies or stay away we are seeing multiple billions of dollars from institutional investors pour in at the new low prices. The uneducated are scared away driving the price down. Those in the know pour in at low prices and watch the merits of blockchain come to be realized.

Knowledge is power. Very smart people are contributing to blockchain development. Top educational institutions are involved. Thousands of companies are building projects using blockchain. Trillions of dollars of value are involved. It's NOT going away! Learn, and make choices based upon your understanding. Don't listen to anyone but yourself.

What about NFTs? Well, there will be hype cycles and there will be low cycles. But the underlying fundamental value proposition, that NFTs make it possible to define provenance and ownership for digital goods, is still a game changer. And Creators have certainly got a new path to financial opportunity if they just learn a little.

I, personally, have a new vision for smart contracts and NFTs that I will share in the near future. These are exciting times and innovation is like it was in the 90's. The 90's was a bubble, and this may happen again, but the end result of the 90's was the Internet. That's a pretty good outcome.

I wish all my fellow IndieHackers good times, well being, and prosperity! We're pretty lucky to have this site to encourage us.

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    I'm in india and most of the talk that's been around crypto is that the gov might impose severe restrictions with regulation's around crypto trading. But then again, more than 10M people are already active traders in the country @wirewalker so not sure if something like this might happen

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      Yes, I'm glad that you brought this up. Thank you.

      Cryptocurrency trading is such a new thing that we're going to see growing pains. India has talked about such restrictions, even with the idea of issuing their own cryptocurrency, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Because Defi eliminates the middle man, taking away their control and traditional piece of the pie, a lot of traditional institutions (including governments) will contemplate how to react. This certainly is the type of consideration to take into account.

      I would say that blockchain, as a technology, has so many other manifestations as products and capabilities that the question of how to stop one part and not another will be an issue. Smart Contracts for ownership rights of land and other assets, DAPPs for the Internet of Things, blockchain ledgers for history to establish trust and provenance, NFTs to enable digital assets to have value, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) in all kinds of manifestations, governance via stakeholder democracies, and ideas like mine that I don't think anyone has even thought of (still in stealth mode), and the imagination can run wild with possibilities.

      It's amazing what this simple little idea of blockchain enables. It's like hypertext was in the early days of the Internet. Some people see stupid little brochures that you can click around - some people see eCommerce, SaaS, Communications, and the World Wide Web.

      There are risks. Especially when talking about crypto investing. Additionally, so many of these other efforts will fail because they are essentially startups. My enthusiasm lies within the cumulative brainpower pouring into this space and the imaginations shaping new possibilities. The utility, new ways of doing old things and new things altogether, make for an exciting time.

      They used to liken the old Internet days to the Gold Rush when the discovery of gold in the U.S. West created boom towns but danger was everywhere. Like then, with blockchain, some will discover gold, others will get rich selling shovels, and a lot will come up empty.

      Be bold or be cautious? Both are right.

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        100% right @wirewalker. Crypto has way too many applications and I genuinely feel we should take advantage of it, considering we are literally at quite the initial stages. Same thing happened with the internet, same thing happened with the stock market, and same things have happened in the past too!

        Also thanks for talking out the time to reply in such a detailed manner!

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