If America didn't exist, and Columbus was relying on his plan, they all would have starved to death roughly where the East Coast is
That reminds me of a line from a track by Apollo 440:
"Mick Jagger came up to me and I said 'I've seen the future' and he goes 'Yeah, if there is one...'".
Hindsight is 20/20, so of course someone will still make that mistake 40 years down the road. We can barely predict with any meaningful accuracy what will happen next year. The idea that we can predict 40 years out is the very height of hubris.
1. That people have been wildly wrong about various technologies before is not evidence that a given specific technology will succeed.
2. Many critics don't doubt the technical capabilities but instead worry about the social harm of systems developed using cryptocurrencies.
Here we are 40 years later communicating with computers. I wonder if in 40 years someone will read your comment and wonder how clueless some were in this era.