I have two responses to this. First, I am very crypto skeptical, but I don't have any problem with "research continuing". However, that's not what I am experie

I have two responses to this. First, I am very crypto skeptical, but I don't have any problem with "research continuing". However, that's not what I am experiencing. If crypto enthusiasts were off in a lab trying to figure out how to make it solve a real problem then great! Instead, I am the "tech expert" for many of my friends and family, and frequently have them reach out to me as they are on the verge of putting a non trivial amount of money into crypto that they can't afford to lose. Most of these people can barely keep their passwords safe, so I have to spend a lot of time talking them out of it because I care about them. A similar thing happens at work. Some random business exec has a great idea to "use blockchain" for some thing that frankly would be better solved with a regular database. I've had to spend a lot of time convincing business people to not use crypto or NFTs yet. Second, what you're doing, and many crypto people do this, is identify real problems that would be great if we could solve them. And then you go, "and isn't crypto great because it hasn't solved these problems, but maybe it could". Yeah, maybe, but it hasn't yet. Crypto reminds me of the semantic web people in a lot of ways. They said, "wouldn't it be great if semantic information were embeded in data and APIs could be machine understandable". Sounds a lot like smart contracts doesn't it? Yes, it would be great if we solved that problem, but we never did. The most we got from the semantic web was the semi-useful json-ld you seen in HTML headers for SEO optimization. Here's the thing, the vast vast majority of new ideas don't pan out. It's a lot easier to identify legit problems than it is to solve them. Crypto people get super excited because it would be amazing to solve those problems, BUT there's no good reason to believe it's likely that it will. I say this as someone who spent years trying to get teh semantic web to work. It never did.