Not quite. The richest actually do the work to keep the system running. They need to stake their claim to the system to validate everyone else's trx. If is in their best interest not to mess up, otherwise they lose their stake in the system.

Cool. So it’s a centralised system ran by the rich (which I don’t necessarily have a problem with).

Again, what is it that ETH provides society that's new and useful?

What do most financial products provide to society that's new and useful?

If you want to throw up your hands and declare this all a waste of time, feel free. You'll have lots of company, and for good reason, but setting some arbitrarily high goal such as "providing something new and useful to society" just makes it sound like you've got an axe to grind.

There's plenty of things about Ethereum (and blockchain exchanges and how they are used and hyped) to criticize legitimately, but this doesn't seem to be one of them.

In reality, you would be very hard pressed to get 51% of all global wealth to agree on anything. Today, it is pockets of ~1% wealth screwing over their regional 0.00001% constituents.

Ethereum forces a global authority :)

So those who benefit from cemented structures are incentivized to maintain status quo. Sounds like humanity, just a different set of masters.

Sounds like the banking system, but now you can vote with your wallet to buy the cryptocoin of your preference. Pretty much akin to how you can vote for a politician, or vote with your money by buying a product or not buying a product.

Not only do those who designed the cryptocoin plus early adapters (the former are the latter, but not necessarily vice versa) get more rich with thin air generated by electricity, they also get more powerful. No wonder these things rise up like mushrooms from the ground.

Man, if I were into this, I'd just convince people 24/7 to get into these cryptocoins. Best way to get rich doing virtually nothing but some marketing. Right?