> At the heart of crypto is the desire for decentralized banking infrastructure and currency, which has non-zero cost to operate and thus requires some degree of compensation for operating the network or protocol.

But where's the value being delivered by that "decentralized banking infrastructure and currency"? Actual usefulness of crypto for genuinely decentralised (i.e. L1) transactions has been going down not up (fees are higher than ever, fewer and fewer stores allow direct payment with cryptocurrency...).