> I don't buy it? Structurally, nothing has really stopped the social engineering and manipulation of cryptocurrency. The same principles that made cryptocurren

> I don't buy it? Structurally, nothing has really stopped the social engineering and manipulation of cryptocurrency. The same principles that made cryptocurrency attractive for scamming still hold true, and the audience of potential legitimate users shrinks with each passing day. Two things (excuse my curtness I think they are good points that can stand alone): - social engineering and manipulation is present in all forms of money, investments, etc -- it's human nature. Crypto essentially democratized it much like MLMs do. So I wouldn't call this a failing of crypto necessarily, but crypto did amplify the effect greatly. - I think "the audience of potential legitimate users shrinking every day passing day" will choke out scamming narrative along with the legitimate use narrative. Once this post-fire brush is cleared, new things (useful things with actual utility) may have a chance to grow. > I hate echoing the comment above, but I've been hearing this argument since 2012. Cryptocurrency will not graduate from it's scam phase unless it has a centralized judicial body to punish and correct wrongdoings. If that ever happens, cryptocurrency will have no tangible benefits when compared to centralized alternatives. It's a good argument (and it's not wrong either). As far as the judicial bodies, I do think that they can be distributed/federated though, and that small networks can grow with trust as currency, anew. Right now the established systems have found one way to encode trust via contracts and implied/actual force, etc. I think that crypto might be able to offer a new way to enforce trust for less serious/lighter use cases. I think of it this way -- do I need the full faith and credit of the united states government to buy a coffee? Maybe not. Also in making that statement I am fully aware that being money is one of the biggest failings of crypto so far, but I think PoS ETH2 + L2 + Sharding/rollups (future) will actually make it possible (in theory at least) to surpass VISA's transaction volume as a network. Also, I think there's a huge way crypto might be better than the traditional alternatives -- it represents a chance to redraw the boundaries. The current system is ossified -- even if crypto is simply a re-creation of the existing system with worse efficiency maybe it's similar to trying to change the engine in a moving plane/train/automobile. You build a second, possibly shittier engine which can be less tied to the mistakes of the first, switch to that, then maybe switch BACK to the original engine after upgrading/changing it. Optimistic, but I think the current success of PoS ETH2 (and the fact literally anyone else can take it and run their own) warrants some optimism.