The fact that it was written in 2017 and yet today the only use cases for blockchain are still just buying small amounts of illegal stuff and warming the planet lends the author a bit of credit as prescient technologist.

You forgot "making money off people who just want to get in on the hype".

...and they are?

I think the subtext that is implied with the no use case statement is really: "that couldn't be done with an existing technology (such as a database)".

Seriously, decentralized, pseudonymous money that is censorship resistant and doesn't rely on any single government or organization is the killer app. That's how I'm using it, it works perfectly for my use case and even though it's a sample size of one, there's at least one person who relies on it and can sleep at night a bit more soundly knowing that their money won't suddenly be gone the next morning because PayPal or their bank looked at them funny because they were born in a spicy patch of land. Anything else comes as a plus.

Do please spare me the whole "it's boiling the oceans" and "only hackers and druggies are using it" spiel though as they're both [0] untrue [1].

[0] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall...

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-fal...