The 5.25" floppy disk was pretty good at transferring data between machines at the time and didn’t introduce many unintended consequences. Let’s say for the sa

The 5.25" floppy disk was pretty good at transferring data between machines at the time and didn’t introduce many unintended consequences. Let’s say for the sake of argument that the 5.25" floppy disk actually transferred data slower then if you had handwritten it between the machines, you couldn’t use the data from the 5.25" floppy disk unless you first validated it which would take several kW hours of power. You also could claim a stake at the data and could potentially sue other disk users for patent violations if you validated some patent more often then them. Now you have a case of a technology that is: a) worse then the alternative, b) expensive to use, and c) has harmful unintended consequences. Now I would consider the 5.25" floppy disk a good comparison to cryptocurrency. However the 5.25" floppy disk was none of these things, as it was a perfectly good technology at the time for data interchange despite it’s limitation. The same can not be said about cryptocurrency. Now this is a silly example I know, I couldn’t find a more realistic case of unintended consequence for the 5.25" floppy disk.