A bunch of talking heads went on CNBC over the past 5-10 years and talked about how existing cryptocurrencies like bitcoin were outlaw non-starters, but that "b

A bunch of talking heads went on CNBC over the past 5-10 years and talked about how existing cryptocurrencies like bitcoin were outlaw non-starters, but that "blockchain technology" was novel and here to stay, provided that governments and big banks would be able to retain control. Those people were and still are idiots, but there were enough of them to catch the attention of unimaginative MBAs at big unimaginative places like Microsoft and IBM -- to spawn products like these.