The Bitcoin whitepaper laid out a way to prevent double-spend in cryptographically-backed digital currencies using proof-of-work. Proof-of-work was just a brute

The Bitcoin whitepaper laid out a way to prevent double-spend in cryptographically-backed digital currencies using proof-of-work. Proof-of-work was just a brute-force approach but lots of research is going into other ways to solve the problem. All cryptocurrency is, is cryptographically-backed digital currency. The current wave of cryptocurrencies are rooted in the blockchain scheme laid out in the whitepaper, with various forms of proof. The only thing new is a way to prevent double-spend; cryptographically-backed currencies were not invented with Bitcoin. This stuff absolutely has a fundamental place in future commerce, especially as generations grow tired of the payment processor mafia acting as global moral arbiters. Smart contracts build upon this, asset classes such as NFTs give distributed ways to work with authentic data. All of the scammers who jumped on to these technologies have nothing to do with the underlying technologies themselves, nor the core group of people who are still interested in progressing this tech. AI is just automation, which can make use of these tools in a trustless environment, without disruption from untrusted/unwelcome parties. It's not life-changing stuff, but these tools will fundamentally drive the web in ways you won't even notice if you don't look for it.