Blockchain technologies have already disrupted a plethora of industries around the world, including retail, food distribution, and supply chains just to name a few. Numerous business leaders developed trust that blockchain can help them with building new financial models and achieving greater efficiency. Yet, although cryptocurrencies tick all of the boxes from the perspective of many businesses and their customers, mass adoption is still out of reach. We talked to Alex Gorshkov, Founder, about solutions for crypto businesses, social unrest and its effects on crypto adoption, building in a bear market, and several other interesting topics. CoinPipe Mining Crisis in Kazakhstan, Geopolitics & Bear Market Kazakhstan (aka a hub for Bitcoin mining) was one of the countries severely gripped by the political crisis at the beginning of the year. The Kazakhstan government banned the use of the Internet, which caused social unrest and made the billion-worth Bitcoin mining industry suffer. Several recent reports indicate that the mining industry has found a way to obtain additional energy, which will, to a certain degree, bring back stability to the mining market, Alex believes. According to him, the vast majority of people have changed their attitude toward cryptocurrency. It is kind of natural to see people looking for safer, more secure, and more reliable alternatives to traditional financial systems, and crypto seems to be one of them. So, instead of thinking that crypto is nothing else but a means for making money, a part of the global population now sees it as a convenient tool for performing transactions. Alex says. “However, we won’t say that doing crypto is not profitable. On the contrary! Everyone who’s been in crypto for more than 5 years knows that the market downtrend is the best opportunity to accumulate more tokens. One of the most popular sayings in crypto goes like this “Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful”. Bear markets are normal trends in crypto, and, more importantly, they are temporary. The ones who are ready to invest now will probably reap numerous benefits once we’re back in the green,” Crypto Regulation Crypto is a largely unregulated industry but hey, that is the entire point of blockchain, right? Regular financial systems can’t provide the freedom crypto can. However, since crypto is a gray area, countries are not trying to resist it but rather strengthen the regulation, introduce cryptocurrency taxes, etc. In Alex's opinion, the answer to whether they can completely control crypto remains to be seen. “Various countries are exploring the possibility of launching CBDCs. There are projects that are working on USDC legislation in the US. We can also see that countries under sanctions are thinking about using crypto for international transactions, which can also contribute to producing a legal framework for cryptocurrencies. *And then, on the other hand, China banned crypto. I’ll just mention the rise of non-custodial wallets out there. Non-custodial wallets can have an unlimited number of users and are even super difficult to regulate,”*Alex explains. According to him, the only way to buy crypto would be via offline machines that are, still, capable of marking addresses. If countries would want to, they’d be able to label certain addresses and limit their access to crypto services. Hopefully, we won’t have many cases like this in the future. Mass Adoption According to Alex, the adoption of the technology by both institutional investors and end users is important, but he still gives a slight advantage to end users. The more people want to start using crypto for regular transactions, the more institutional investors and big players will start paying attention to the market. he says. “We are likely to see mass crypto adoption in the following 5 to 15 years maximum. Crypto will be used for paying for goods and services in cafes, restaurants, stores. We know that the largest payment card processors, Visa and Mastercard are in the process of accepting crypto payments, which is great. The rising number of crypto enthusiasts is even making banks and exchanges consider accepting crypto. Once this happens, that will be the trigger for mass adoption,” El Salvador is one of the use cases Alex presented that proves Bitcoin's legal tender status is more than viable. Somewhere around 20% of businesses in El Salvador accept crypto payments today. Crypto will hopefully become a solvent solution for more countries worldwide in the near future, he predicts. B2B Solutions, NEAR, and CoinPipe turns out to be one of the fiercest competitors to Solana. Huge amounts of money are pumped into the ecosystem and numerous marketplaces and games are built on it. NEAR could technically be one of the most interesting and advanced protocols out there. NEAR Protocol Alex explains. “After all, CoinPipe is also built on NEAR. Our goal is to help businesses of all sizes tap into crypto by simply giving them an easy way to start accepting crypto payments. So many businesses don’t even know if accepting payments in Bitcoin, NEAR, or Ethereum is even legal, which tells us that there is plenty of room for education and getting people interested,” is a finance solution that makes it easy for both offline and online stores and their clients to make crypto transactions. Booming in the online environment is relatively easy and, in this world, crypto will soon become something usual. However, the offline environment poses a couple of challenges. CoinPipe Alex concludes. “Our aim is to make it possible to pay in crypto without requiring the user to convert their crypto to fiat and withdraw the money. One thing is for sure – the market is still forming and the CoinPipe team truly believes that we have the potential to become one the biggest adoption boosters,”
