First, please do not pretend that you know me. I have neither a problem with financial engineering in principle (combined with software engineering or not) or c

First, please do not pretend that you know me. I have neither a problem with financial engineering in principle (combined with software engineering or not) or cryptography as such and certainly would not describe myself as any sort of purist. Not sure what running startups have to do with it (although have plenty of experience with them too), but comparing average startup with any ICO one is disingenuous. As far as I can tell there is little to show for so far if one ignores companies not aimed at cryptocurrencies ecosystem itself. But more to the point, it has been 9 years since Bitcoin was released building on ideas that were even older. Tech is more complicated than building website mid-90s (although probably not as much as you seem to believe), but again is not that complicated to excuse lack of compelling products. I am not saying those will not come, but "early days" is a piss-poor excuse. I do, however, dislike your use of crypto as for an old fart like me this should be used for cryptography.