[282883392]

Crypto certainly has, if not more, at least the same utility than jewelry. Trust less, distributed ledgers--these aren't tulips.

[wpietri]

They do not have the same utility. I can walk out of my house and find people deriving value from wearing jewelry. Trustless, distributed ledgers, on the other hand, not so much.

At the moment, Bitcoin's primary non-speculative use case is light financial crime: money laundering, capital control evasion, ransomware, buying various illegal stuff, ponzi schemes, etc. I agree that it's possible that one day trustless, distributed ledgers will deliver enormous amounts of value. But it's important to distinguish between delivered value and potential value.

[actsasbuffoon]

The only developments in cryptocurrency that I've personally found interesting have been smart contracts. Even then, there's no reason that couldn't be done by a traditional financial institution using fiat currency. The fact that smart contracts were first implemented with cryptocurrency is an implementation detail, not a fundamental requirement.

Frankly, I'd probably rather use smart contracts with regular currency. If there was some kind of scam or theft then the financial institution might be able to reverse some of the charges.

Most of the advantages of cryptocurrency don't really sound like advantages to me.

[gefh]

Tulips and jewelry at least look pretty. And you're trusting, at least, the implementation and the underlying math. Personally the risk of recourse-less outweighs the value of trust-less.