I don't think anybody denies that Satoshi's Bitcoin whitepaper was novel and extremely clever. At least I don't. But being novel and clever is not enough to jus

I don't think anybody denies that Satoshi's Bitcoin whitepaper was novel and extremely clever. At least I don't. But being novel and clever is not enough to justify the "frenzied speculation" that followed IMO. You seem to root for cryptocurrencies so I can understand your frustration when faced with naysayers like me but understand that the feeling is mutual. Ten years that we hear the same promises, ten years that we're told that "it's being researched", ten years that we only see half-assed solutions to fundamental problems that create as many issues as they solve (e.g. Segwit, PoS) or basically give up on the whole ideal of cryptocurrencies by introducing centralization or trusted peers (Ripple and many others). Ten years on, billions of dollars speculatively invested, "clever people" supposedly working on these issues and what do you have to show for it? People basically reinventing the current banking system on top of an inefficient, wildly speculative asset. "Fidelity just made it easier for hedge funds and other pros to invest in cryptocurrencies". New ways to speculate with cryptocurrencies! The conversation is frustrating because all's been said. We all know where we stand and at this point the only way to move forward would be for the cryptocurrency scene to come up with something truly novel and useful, not something that reinvents the current banking system but worse. Ten years on, and with as much intellectual honesty I can muster, I still see only two worthwhile uses of cryptocurrencies: buying drugs online and serving as some sort of notary to timestamp documents. For these two things Bitcoin is actually very competitive. For the rest as far as I'm concerned it's either "reinventing the wheel but worse" (re-creating current infrastructure only less efficiently) or "software cold fusion" (pipe dreams that would require major breakthrough in computer science to achieve their stated goals). >Frenzied speculation brought about inadvertent side effects but these should not detract from the fact that significant advancements are continuously being researched and implemented. The frenzied speculation is basically the only actuality surrounding cryptocurrencies these days. Maybe this research you speak of is going to bear fruits and revolutionize the world as we know it or maybe it's going to fizzle out gently as hype dies. This is not a small startup in a garage, this is supposedly a trillion dollar market cap industry, "we're working on it" doesn't cut it for me anymore.