TikTok was banned in India years ago. There was some noise initially but eventually everyone moved to Instagram Reels/YT Shorts. A few homegrown apps tried to capture the space but couldn't compete against Meta and Alphabet's entrenched network effect and superior platforms. TikTok wasn't as big in India back then as it is in the US right now but it was gaining traction and then lost it all. The same alternatives already exist in the US as well, people will move on in no time.
I am talking about people who "build" these exchanges and platforms and new protocols and shitcoins. Anyone peddling anything under Web3, DeFi, Blockchain, NFT etc is a scammer. People who think they are trading or investing are the suckers.
I am and it's only going to get worse with even car companies demanding subscription to enable features in cars. SAAS was a revolutionary idea once, hopefully one day someone will decide to sell a product or service for a one time upfront cost again and it will be welcomed like a breath of fresh air.
>how do I continue my current standard of living for my family while working on a startup?
You can't
You either have to save up for a year's worth of expenses and also downgrade the lifestyle and make sacrifices or convince a VC and raise a decent seed round but that too will come with conditions and you will probably not be able to pay yourself your market salary.
Entrepreneurship is hard. Very hard. Survivorship bias ensures that we only hear about successful ones where everything worked out. But as you already know, that happens in a tiny number of cases and that too after a lot of hardships.
Starting up something as a side hustle is the only viable option. You will have to put in after work hours and sacrifice some family time to fulfill your dream if you don't want to upset your marriage and lifestyle.
I suggest you read about history of money. How it came to be, why humans needed money and what all things have been used as money and why eventually we ended up with money being issued by a sovereign (by a fiat). Then read up on the history of banking. The idea of cryptocurrency and its underlying ideology goes against the fundamental principles of finance and economics that have evolved naturally over past thousands of years ever since humans stopped being hunter gatherers.
I have money. How can I get some crypto? From a middleman. Need to pay fees.
Then I send it to someone. Transaction fees.
The receiver wants to buy groceries or pay kid's school fees, so they need to convert the crypto to money. Again fees.
So lots of middlemen and fees are involved. And most of the time, One would need to provide full KYC and need to have a bank account to convert to/from crypto.
Tell me more about how it is better, cheaper and faster than regular banking system.
Git is not a blockchain. An audit log doesn't need to be blockchain. The whole point of blockchain is that is is decentralized, trust-less and permission-less. You take it away and what is left?
I have read that whitepaper. That was the first think I read when I started researching about the whole crypto and blockchain space. And this is the culmination of my research https://bit.ly/3OB5G18
Crypto is scam. Some people at Stripe are trying to capitalize on the hype. We'll see how it goes.
Something can't be both a currency as well as a speculative asset. Bitcoin was conceived as a currency. It promised fast transaction, low fees and no central trust provider authority like a government or a bank. But it and countless other cryptos have morphed into something people speculate on for gains. There is still very little you can actually buy using crypto. It's useless as a medium of exchange (volatility, high fees, non-reversible, slow etc). The high volatility and lack of any underlying utility whic can give it a value means it is a ponzi scheme and only those who got in early will come out richer. Late entrants will end up holding bags of worthless digital tokens.
Don't worry, governments and centrals banks won't let go of one of the fundamental powers of a sovereign. The anarcho-capitalist dream of being your own bank isn't sustainable in real life anyway.
>The sole purpose of blockchain is to prevent double spending without a trusted party
That is most accurate description of blockchain I have read.
Unfortunately, the mechanism for that (Proof-of-work) is slow, expensive and planet destroying at scale. And while we may remove a trust provider third party, we aren't getting rid of centralization with blockchain anyway.
Blockchain has no use other than to store tokens for speculative gambling.
Take a look at this presentation - https://bit.ly/3OB5G18
Proof-of-work - the USP of blockchain makes it slow and expensive and planet destroying at scale. But it's not a bug, it's a feature. You take it out and the blockchain is neither public not permission-less. A private, trusted, permissioned blockchain is pointless.
The whole blockchain, web3, crypto, NFT, DeFi, DAO ecosystem is a massive ponzi scheme. The proponents keep cooking up new buzzwords to keep the pot boiling and to attract new starry eyed idiots who will bring in real money into the system to keep the ponzi going.
Blockchain is a hammer in search of nail. A solution for problems that do not exist.