Reading through your post, I want to point out that all your insightful reasons why cryptocurrency should be shut down are actually acknowledged problems that have been worked on by many in the space leading to solutions that address different pain points you've brought up. Examples include stablecoins (this name is meant to be as ironic as you think it is), private blockchains (here's a hint, nobody is using these to buy drugs or demand ransom), blockchains protected by something other than "energy wasting" Proof of Work.
I do have a few points for you to consider that might help you see the value of all this experimentation for society:
- Imagine someone living in a country such as Cuba or Venezuela or Iran that wants to buy things online (no, not heroin) and why they might find the existence of something like Bitcoin or Ethereum useful.
- You call for it all to be shut down, but how exactly would that be accomplished? (Most) cryptocurrencies are open source software and in a fringe scenario where experimentation here only serves to improve the anti-fraud precautions surrounding traditional currencies, isn't that still of some value to our society?
Some might argue that these supposed benefits don't outweigh the existing harm and therefore there isn't net value to society and there I'd just say we need to agree to disagree.
Have I perhaps changed your mind that cryptocurrencies don't have any value for our global society?
Blockchain is not just crypto currencies. It was just the first use-case.
I'd recommend to check out some of the links from the 1st section: Blockchain foundations, on why we need decentralized technologies, such as blockchain.
Our current internet is broken and blockchain could potentially help to make a change.
It's still incredible to me how pro-blockchain HN is, as evidenced by all the downvoting in this thread. The only use case at this point is decentralized gambling / drug purchasing / Augur / etc, and the technology itself is useless in a variety of different ways (scaling, transaction cost, energy consumption, fraud protection, reversibility, and so on). A similar technology in a different space would be ripped apart here.
Scaling and transaction cost have been solved using ZK-rollups. Transactions cost less than a cent and take less than a second. 2000 transactions per second throughput. A lot has changed in the last 2 years.
It's permissionless access to financial markets that are guaranteed to remain running, and to operate according to the rules encoded in their smart contract, indefinitely.
Its properties make it enormously valuable for applications involving large numbers of people coordinating amongst each other.
Ethereum's DeFi has seen collateral increase from $750 million on April 1st to $2 billion today, so people are seeing utility in it.
