Very excited about how blockchain will change real estate. Imagine actually being able to pay contractors if and only if they fulfill what they agreed upon in the smart contract or having all of our legal documentation as pertaining to the contract written into the ledger. It's going to be absolutely amazing.
As individuals have pointed out here, yes it's confusing. Perhaps a bit too nerdy or finance-bro-y. It's something new and lots of people have already made a ton of money on it. It will definitely get much easier soon. I firmly believe that you still haven't missed the boat though if you're a buy and hold type of person. Your biggest enemy in this situation will be yourself if you love to check on how your investments are doing because this market never ends. It's 24/7. Like the stock market on some coke.
Certainly there are many buzzwords that all coins will use such as "decentralized" and it's mainly because of the crash that happened back in 2008 with finance banks getting massive bailouts, stock and house prices falling. In a way, it's a bit harder to trust that our govt has our back. Yes we value the U.S. dollar being worth, in fact, $1. Inflation can say otherwise. The attractive thing about cryptocurrency is that it's like magical internet gold because we know how many of these coins are circulating and how many will be produced by a given certain year thus being able to know what the market cap of certain coins are.
Either way, as @Jon Q. mentions, this will be here to stay as currency, commodity, and utility. Give it some time to mature and in a few years this will be a large part of our lives as prices stabilize. Barrier to entry is pretty low if you buy on coinbase (or Robinhood soon).
For me, personally, this has been one of the best investments I have ever made and I'm excited to be a part of it. I'm happy to discuss further if you're curious via PM or on this discussion.
