The international cryptocurrency market enjoyed a few golden years prior to 2017, but the shine has started to wear off as people began to realize the bubble effect being created by disproportional media hype.

For a little while there, people were making glorious profit from their cryptocurrency investments. Like all booms however, it didn’t take too long before there was a rush, and not everyone who was rushing to release an ICO was really qualified to do so.

Not that there’s an official qualification required, but that more than a few of those ICOs were being issued by people with no real solid background in either finance or technology. A string of embarrassing cryptocurrency failures later, and the whole of the market, including top performers like Bitcoin and Ethereum, was paying the price for the misadventures of a few.

That tends to happen when people see vast fortunes wiped out due to unguided speculation on unproved technology. It’s this kind of problem that slammed the brakes on the cryptocurrency growth rate.

This could actually be a fantastic opportunity

Figuring out the real value of a cryptocurrency is not something that can easily be done. It’s not like investing in stocks or shares where there are easy metrics to base calculations on. Much of what makes a particular cryptocurrency valuable is the market’s opinion of it.

The best way to go forward is research carefully what blockchain sectors a currency is focusing on, and anticipate which sectors seem to have the best long term growth potential.

If you can accurately predict where the demand is likely to originate from, then you are setting yourself in the best position for when a surge in investment comes along. This is the real money making potential of investment in blockchain based currencies, and it is far better to get in early than to wait for the market to move in ahead of you.

With this type of investment, diversification is not as important as it is in most other investment types, but still you should be cautious of putting all your eggs in one basket.

Spreading the risk carefully over a handful of options will give you some protection against short term falls, and also means you have something on hand to trade so you can take advantage of short term gains. Investing in cryptocurrency is not difficult, it just requires common sense and a bit of research to make sure you’re backing a technology that is going places.

There has been quite a bit of resistance within banking circles and certain governments to the growth of blockchain based currencies, and considerable negative press has been launched which could be regarded as a propaganda campaign intended to undermine the public’s faith in decentralized currency markets.

Even though the face value of the major cryptocurrencies has fallen during the past year, these currencies are far from keeling over. In fact, they are still going strong and won’t be that easy to get rid of. Worldwide economies will need to adjust to the presence of decentralized competition, and this is a good thing because it provides people with an alternative to the traditional economic system while simultaneously not excluding them from it.

At the extreme end of the anti-crypto movement, there are murmurings of the desire to exclude people from the option of using cryptocurrency. Given the nature of cryptocurrency, however, it’s very unlikely that bans will prove effective.

Countries which have already banned cryptocurrency include Algeria, Bolivia, Cambodia, Ecuador, Egypt, Morocco, Nepal, and Pakistan. Implicit bans exist in Bangladesh, China (excluding Hong Kong), Colombia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Taiwan.

Countries where cryptocurrency is legal but there is a banking prohibition or heavy restrictions include Canada, India, Jordan, Thailand (easing), and Vietnam.

The problem for these countries is that the currencies exist on the Internet. There is no enforceable way for any individual territory to prevent citizens from participating in this economy.

Bans are pointless and set countries back

A citizen of Algeria wishing to speculate in cryptocurrency merely needs to ensure that none of his or her trades are executed inside the borders of Algeria. Traveling outside the country is one option, but VPN and proxy technology make it unnecessary. It is just too easy to thwart bans, making it pointless to enact them.

The serious downside for countries that ban cryptocurrency is that this denies local businesses the opportunity to participate in the lucrative blockchain industry, consequently stifling innovation and research. This sets those countries back, where other countries around them are able to make advances.

Right now that’s not a very big problem, but in the future the results will be easy to see. Those who are surging forward with blockchain innovation now will be very far ahead of the territories which don’t allow use of cryptocurrency (an essential unit of payment needed for blockchain applications).

No matter where you live, you should be able to invest in this technology. The artificially created bear market won’t last, and this has to be a great time to buy into crypto while the prices are holding steady.

Some people think that the only thing blockchain is any good for is cryptocurrency transactions, but in this article we’re going to prove them wrong. There are plenty of ways blockchain has been put to use, some more productive than others.

We’d like to take this opportunity to show you the wild side of blockchain, in the hope it might encourage more innovation and creativity.

1. Blockchain-based lottery

This is probably the newest blockchain utilization to emerge as of January 2019. This is certainly a leap forward in originality. Gambling is not something new to blockchain, but gambling in a lottery certainly is.

Especially a lottery that claims to be not entirely up to chance. The company behind this game called Fomo2Moon, actually claims they can provide you with a “predictable income”.

It gets a little freaky with the offer of commissions for each friend you persuade to sign up. Many anti-crypto activists are already accusing cryptocurrencies of being pyramid schemes, so commission based sign up programs for blockchain based systems probably won’t do much to reduce these accusations. Maybe especially when it’s a game connected to gambling.

Unlike a typical non-blockchain lottery, there is no mention of regulation anywhere on the website at the time of writing, or even which country the lottery is based out of.

Technically, since ether, the currency used in this lottery, is not legal tender, there may be a valid argument that gambling legislation doesn’t apply, because it’s not real money. Nobody goes to jail for betting with Monopoly money, so this shouldn’t be any different, right?

2. CryptoKitties

If you thought a lottery based on blockchain was pretty far out, what are you going to make of a service that uses Ethereum NFTs to provide virtual pets?

That’s freaky enough, but the most surprising thing about this particular use of Ethereum is that it caught on. People are even “breeding” these things. Crazy and crazier, some CryptoKitties have sold for more than the equivalent of $100,000. There are even celebrity CryptoKitty owners.

3. Streamium

If the YouTube universe just isn’t crazy enough for you, there’s always Streamium to turn to. A video streaming service where you pay for content in satoshi (a satoshi is 0.00000001 of a Bitcoin).

At the time of writing, that’s very cheap, but then again it’s a highly subjective matter as to whether the cost of streaming the data is worth it.

4. BitFury Lightbulb

Great ideas have frequently been depicted in cartoons as lightbulbs, so it’s kind of appropriate that BitFury’s great idea is an actual lightbulb. What makes this one different is that it mines Bitcoin while it’s running. Not very much Bitcoin, because it’s just a lightbulb, but it mines a lot more Bitcoin than an ordinary lightbulb does.

This is something you won’t find in stores, and it’s not really very practical. It is a unique blockchain innovation, however, so it deserves its place on this list.