Cryptocurrency has many benefits to it. Decentralization being one of the biggest benefits of crypto. That means that you have control of your money and you don't have to rely on a centralized intermediary in order to use it. On the other hand, cryptocurrency has several detractors. Crypto is rife with scams. This has been the case even during a bear market. Also, crypto is risky. This has always been the case, and that's why all cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin included, are referred to as risk assets.
The riskiness of cryptocurrencies has to do with several reasons. Some of this is because of the aforementioned scams, but also because of price fluctuation, and self-custody. Price fluctuations in crypto are well known, since the price of most crypto tokens increases several times over during a bull run and then collapses by 80-90% during a bear market. Self-custody is just sending and/or holding a cryptocurrency in a crypto wallet. This is where things can tricky for most people because there are hot wallets and their are cold wallets. Some wallets are on web-browsers, some on mobile phones as apps, and some are their own devices (cold wallets). Making a small error when sending coins to and from a wallet means that the coins are lost, unless whomever you sent the coins to decides to return them (they most likely won't).
The likelihood of the average person getting into cryptocurrency is low right now. Even with fast and cheap transactions on many blockchains, buying the coins and setting up a wallet to hold them in is most likely too much for an average individual to do. If we want cryptocurrency to go mainstream we have to make it easier for the average person to use. Bringing web 3 to web 2 could be a way to fix this. Making it so that ordinary people don't need to buy coins or make a wallet to use blockchain technology.
Do your own research on this because I'm not a financial advisor, but there is a new blockchain going into testnet right now called Voi Network or $voi that will hopefully do just this. The new blockchain uses the Algorand Virtual Machine, or AVM for short, with some alterations to focus more on providing a web 2.5 experience. Basically the goal of the new blockchain, as I understand it, is that websites and services will be built on top of the blockchain. The websites and services would need to hold $voi for transactions to run. And the node runners, which provide the infrastructure for the blockchain, receive the transaction fees. Customers on the sites would only need to make a username and password, signing blockchain transactions while signing up. And they would also sign transactions while checking out. Most of this would be at the cost of the website or service unless the new user had $voi.
In short I think that cryptocurrency will need to become easier to use before the normies start to use it. I think Voi Network could potentially fix this problem, but it's not even a coin you can purchase yet nor has it gone live. If the world chooses decentralization over centralization, cryptocurrency would be the future. However, as we've seen time and time again, people seem to be more attracted to centralization. So I'm not very optimistic.
What are your thoughts?
