These decentralised systems are a natural abstraction for so many different types of problems and systems. If you leverage them you can still get high performance systems in a centralised manner but the hard work making those systems resilient, localised, and highly available has already been solved. If you design your systems on top of this technical layer you can leverage the benefits without the costs of centralisation for the most part.

The other academic argument to be made is that this is basically the only industry that is meaningfully pushing cryptography forwards (IMHO). Concepts like Functional Encryption, Fully Homomorphic Encryption, Secure Multi-Party Computation, and Zero Knowledge Proof Systems have been primarily funded by cryptocurrency research and towards the application in decentralised zero trust systems (which are basically the "ideal" environment for exploring cryptography and game theoretic technologies).

Code doesn't fix people problems but it can augment existing systems and letting those systems evolve to their logical conclusions is a worthwhile endeavour.

Well, they did. They pretty much all failed or were made to fail (DigiCash[0], Flooz, e-gold, etc.) or were subsumed into the existing system (eg. PayPal).

As far as I can tell, the big picture hope this time around is that the existing system will be subsumed into one or more successful cryptocurrencies, rather than the other way around (which defeats the decentralization).

[0] DigiCash was an anonymous, nominally distributed, system, which is a different set of properties than current cryptocurrencies.

If not for AML, KYC and basically the fact you just can't really use cash any more in significant sums for anything we wouldn't have had to bother.

I have 200,000 bitcoin, or maybe I have 0.2, no-one knows other than me. Good.

The same is far from being true via other means such as the legacy banking system or cash. I mean, you can try and send a briefcase full of notes in the post cross-border, it might work, I wouldn't know or care to try.

Obviously the Government can attempt to, or pass laws, to censor anything at any time for any reason. In my country it was illegal for me to visit family for about 6 months this/last year, there's nothing special about Bitcoin, power will attempt to fuck with you simply because they can.

As technologists, we ought to be better than this. Think about this like we do with on-prem vs cloud. It is decentralization vs. centralization, but far more muted and less political. We should approach this with a mature contemplation, not cheap tribalism.

As technologists, we ought to recognize the difference and see the forests for the trees. As a technologist, I cannot unsee the patterns nor look away.

I’m sure you’d find similar musings in 2600 or Phrack decades ago.

> Do you refuse to acknowledge the value-add to decentralization that the first group brings?

Decentralization needs the blockchain less than the blockchain needs decentralization.

Short of a worldwide communist revolution, that's just going to continue to be the case for any up and coming technologies that make money. Who benefitted most from the enormous gains in tech stocks over the last 25 years? I'll wager it isn't the minimum wage employees.

> Decentralization needs the blockchain less than the blockchain needs decentralization.

Name for me any other way of transferring money to a stranger over the internet in a decentralized fashion. Name for me any other way of executing Turing complete code in a censorship-resistant fashion. These are two big parts of decentralization that crypto solves. Do you refuse to acknowledge that?

There's a reason the Silk Road only appeared after Bitcoin came on the scene. Tor's been around a long time, PGP's been around a long time, but Bitcoin was the missing puzzle piece. I'm not saying drugs are good, I'm just saying decentralization tech didn't reach the level required to implement Silk Road before crypto came on the scene.