Well, my brother joined a fintech startup in Europe that started with blockchain but pivoted back to boring software building. That particular niche they're in

Well, my brother joined a fintech startup in Europe that started with blockchain but pivoted back to boring software building. That particular niche they're in is seeing all the blockchain startups failing because they're not actually solving the use-case. So sure, there's maybe been a lot of research value created in terms of ideas explored and protocols built, but it's not clear any of that actually has practical value outside of building more blockchains. Merkle trees are probably the main cryptocurrency tech I've seen outside of cryptocurrency (& even then in limited use), and that's not even from cryptocurrency but a pretty old data structure concept from 1979. If you're familiar with R&D ideas generated by the blockchain researches that have been applied successfully outside of the blockchain, please enlighten me as I'm eager to fill the gaps in my knowledge and go down a reading rabbit hole. Look, I'm not discounting out of hand that there's maybe been some research and market value created. What I tried to communicate is I'm not convinced it's been a net positive vs all the costs that came with it (investments lost, pollution, opportunity cost lost). That's why I said market value is a measure, but humans in general struggle to figure out holistic ways of computing value, especially when looking at it as a hypothetical opportunity cost vs what else we could be spending our time on. If you're wondering why you got downvoted, I suspect it's because you wrote an emotional response attacking me and calling me ignorant without actually engaging in a thoughtful discussion.