Crypto projects tend to be the best in the entire world about paying out bug bounties. The connection to dollars is really obvious. In the last three months there have million dollar plus bounties paid out.

Here's an article from today about a million dollar bounty paid out:

https://medium.com/immunefi/notional-double-counting-free-co...

Here's another whitehat save in the last two weeks of 480 million dollars:

https://media.dedaub.com/phantom-functions-and-the-billion-d...

Imagine how many other world problems we could have solved of cryptos were not a thing. No scams, rugpulls, or bounties.

All that money could have gone towards world hunger and climate change. Would that have been a better use of it for marginalized people?

Capital tends to get allocated where it can be the most product for its owner. The alternative to putting it into crypto would not have been to solve world hunger, climate change, or to create a more equitable world.

It’s like saying “think of all the ways we could have made the world better if people didn’t invest in Apple.”

It helps to realize the USD values of the amounts involved are mostly bullshit. Things like NFTs wouldn’t be worth a small fraction of what they supposedly are if people had to buy them with actual USD.

Some things can't be solved with money. (Or rather, it would take infinite money to solve them in a given amount of time, but allow enough time and solving it is free.)

Imagine how many people could be fed if people just stopped buying Starbucks… People have varied motivations but reward for self is a pretty common theme across them.

What percentage you think that speculative wealth would be sitting in hedge funds if crypto was not a thing?

Getting the corrupted governments and their money out of the equation (even if to only to some extent), solves more problems in the long run.

These days are the upfront prices we pay for a much bigger financial revolution that would be good for humanity in the long run.

All the energy saved...

were they actually paid in dollars, or some crypto that cant be exchanged into that many dollars?

Close enough to dollars, although one project did also give out a bonus of their own tokens on top of the promised reward.

Large projects tend to be pretty good about paying out as promised, and not in weird tokens.

That's partially true in short term pump and dumps, but not for anything long term or with innovation. Investing in practical innovation and holding is still the easiest way to make money in crypto.

Could you name five successful non-crypto products produced by this innovation? Could you name what sort of risk-adjusted returns they have produced?

Most crypto are pump and dumps, but there is also the bizarre practice of a community of bagholders continuing a project after it has already been dumped by the promoters

Not altogether unprecedented though; the suicide cult Heaven's Gate had people stay around to maintain their website, etc. and apparently they still believe the Hale-Bopp comet was some portend of the end of times.