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.

When blockchain technology took off a decade ago, only an exceptionally small percentage of the population knew what to make of it. Now finally coming into its eleventh year of existence in 2019, not much has changed in terms of the public perception, except that some of the ignorance has been converted to fear. Ignorant fear, but damaging nonetheless.

Ask the average person in the street what they know about blockchain and you’re not likely to get a very informed opinion back. When the light bulb, the telephone, the automobile, and the aeroplane were invented, you’d have been hard pressed to find anyone a decade later who hadn’t heard anything of those inventions. There’s definitely something wrong with the fact that after 10 years most people don’t have a clue what blockchain is.

Media focus on the negative

In direct opposition to the words of the famous song, the media has for the most part chosen to eliminate the positive and focus on the negative when it comes to reporting about anything connected to the cryptocurrency industry.

The lack of sincere attention, and sensationalism of every scandal and failure, certainly hasn’t helped the image of that industry either. Then there’s the tendency for reports to use blockchain as a synonym for Bitcoin, which is grossly misleading. It’s time for the better uses of blockchain to get some attention.

The positive contributions of blockchain technology

Unlike the scenarios painted by media reports, there are many positive ways blockchain is making a difference. Most of these are newsworthy developments, but they’re not getting the attention they deserve, which is why blockchain technology is still not widely known and accepted.

1 – Helping to make medicine safer in the UK

The trade in counterfeit medicines is a serious risk to public health, so anything that can help reduce this threat has to be regarded as a good thing. One blockchain innovation that holds this promise is MediConnect, which also will help avoid problems associated with people illegally obtaining medications through prescription duping.

Also in a powerful step forward for blockchain, and particularly Stratis (on which MediConnect is built), this system is being built in collaboration with the National Health Service (NHS), a government organization that manages public health care in the UK.

2- Low fee international money transfers

It’s definitely not surprising that blockchain can help international trade by allowing people to make transactions and transfers using cryptocurrency. What may be a little more surprising for some people is that blockchain can also be used for securely transferring fiat currencies almost anywhere in the world almost instantly. The most well known service offering this potential at the moment is CoinPip.

Currently in January 2019 that is only available for business-to-business and business-to-consumer transactions, but it’s only a matter of time before these fast low cost money transfers are available at the consumer level.

It’s just one more reason for banks to fear blockchain, because this system allows people to make international transfers more quickly and at lower cost than what the traditional banking system does.

3- Helping to enforce Fair Trade

Discerning consumers care about where their products originate from, especially when it comes to food items. Not only does this help ensure food safety more easily, but for certain notorious products such as coffee and chocolate, it also helps verify that products originate from ethical suppliers.

A global initiative known as Fair Trade allows ethical growers and suppliers of such products to have their products certified as being ethically produced.

Now in Uganda, the end-to-end supply chain tracking power of blockchain is being used to help make sure that products arriving in stores and being promoted as Fair Trade products actually are coming from those Fair Trade farms.

While it’s not only aimed at Fair Trade, that’s the most important use for it. Consumer safety is also greatly simplified. For example, in the event of a product recall, a product can be traced on every step of its journey from the farm to the supermarket, making it easier to identify where products started from and where they ended up.

This is just the beginning

We provided only three examples from many other very positive ways blockchain technology is being utilized.

The good news is that this is just the start of many great things that are going to come out of blockchain in the years ahead, and who knows… by the time we get to the 20^th anniversary of blockchain, it may finally be a word recognized by everyone.