There are a number of real-world applications to which cryptocurrency has been proven to be useful outside of gambling and financial speculation, such as darknet markets, ransomware, donations to blacklisted organisations, paying international contractors sotto banco, transporting money illegally across borders... While you may notice a common pattern in their legality or lack thereof, they certainly have real needs that are fulfilled by cryptocurrency.

I'm aware of that niche, but I was speaking mostly of the ICOs that promised new technologies and of broader adoption of cryptocurrency across the economy.

The thing that's shocked me the most is the amount of money raised by ICO-type projects during the boom and the fact that not one of them appears to have delivered anything. I'd expect some to be scams, but every single one of them? Not a single reputable functional team raised money with an ICO and shipped something?

I'm excluding ICOs that shipped things of use only to other ICOs, cryptocurrency, gambling, and speculation. That's self-referential: crypto to make crypto for more crypto. I'm talking about things of use in the real world. That's why I called it a parody of financial capitalism. The point of money is to facilitate useful things, not to just chase itself around in circles. The latter is the essence of financial capitalism vs. real productive capitalism.

I mean what timeline were you expecting? Did you honestly think that an application with the attack surface of literally everyone would come-out polished in a year or two?

Ethereum's ICO was in 2014, and most ICOs were on Ethereum and are less than 1-2 years old. One of the older "smart contract" projects has been in development since 2013 and it is still a massive work in progress.

You have a shit ton of people who want to reap the benefits of what-to-come, in fact that is what ICOs made easier. What it lacks are extremely competent people willing to dedicate anywhere between 3-10 years of their life to make it happen. It is hard to say you can buy that with strictly money.

Go look at https://www.canwork.io/

I pay for my VPS in BTC