The double spend problem. That enabled decentralised trust and interchange of value. You could tank the value of bitcoin or ethereum by imposing tough regulatio

The double spend problem. That enabled decentralised trust and interchange of value. You could tank the value of bitcoin or ethereum by imposing tough regulations to it but it will still be around regardless of what you do as long as we're here. The implications for what that means for banks and governments of today is huge. In the meantime though what people actually use it for today: - To get richer because the price is going up - To get richer because it's an unregulated market so you can be a market maker today or dive into all the other trading variants programable money enables that don't have any counter-part in traditional finance. - To get richer starting a small project with no experience and getting overfunded. - To transact because you're part of the 1.7 billion unbanked - To keep your wealth because you're part of the masses that don't agree with your governments restrictions on your money (china comes to mind but you could expand it to westerners too that don't agree) - (less than 5% probably?) build stuff, experiment, learn, try to come up with the financial system of tomorrow.