I think it was more interesting when it looked like there would be use cases other than speculation. The first example in the O'Reilly Bitcoin book has someone

I think it was more interesting when it looked like there would be use cases other than speculation. The first example in the O'Reilly Bitcoin book has someone buying a cup of coffee, these days most cryptocurrency proponents would laugh at it. (Someone will reply that you're supposed to use a layer 2 protocol for that, but that looks insanely complex for most people.)