I apologize for the pedantry but "blockchain" != "cryptocurrency." My inner cynic is bearish on cryptocurrencies, VR (at least in broad adoption), and to a lesser extent blockchain tech but of the three the one that has the least-worst chance of finding a useful broad fit IMO is the use of blockchain tech since it's really nothing more than a trustless method of double-entry accounting and a potential means of avoiding the risk of direct federation for service providers (you stop being the single point of failure/data breach target).
Sadly I also suspect that blockchain will go down with the whole cryptocurrency ship due to guilt-by-association, much like the AI winter that followed the overhyped 1980s era took with it a number of viable limited-domain solutions that had to wander the desert for 20-30 years before being revivified for the current AI/ML efforts.
OK, 4-5 years ago I was hired by a startup building a data storage/sharing hardware solution that emphasized security. Each storage device could be a an ad hoc member of a group of devices and there were multiple users for each device/group. Individual chunks of data (be it files, filesystems, dirs, etc) had ownership and privileges as did the devices themselves.
What the startup did NOT want to be is the single source of authority or federation for permissions, group membership, user management, etc (they would not only become the single point of attack but the devices themselves would be dependent upon the existence of the company continuing to provide federation services, so going-out-of-business would render the devices useless).
The most obvious solution to those issues was a blockchain-based system. As long as devices existed they could continue to interop, the entries in the blockchain provided audit trails, the entries could be replayed for sync purposes, etc.
I agree, and fair enough. VR will get broad adoption, a few things need to happen before it will (e.g. 4000x4000 per eye) but the hardware innovations needed to get there aren't big wild things. They are simply things that will become a thing through incremental progress.
Sadly I also suspect that blockchain will go down with the whole cryptocurrency ship due to guilt-by-association, much like the AI winter that followed the overhyped 1980s era took with it a number of viable limited-domain solutions that had to wander the desert for 20-30 years before being revivified for the current AI/ML efforts.