I do not see any need in my life for the combination of high finance and decentralization. Centralized and highly regulated high finance is bad enough, and already something I try to avoid except when absolutely necessary. My economic life is highly decentralized, but with extremely high trust and very little financialization, so no need for what crypto people mean when they say "decentralization".

> I think the BTC whitepaper is a brilliant example of human ingenuity

I largely have the same problem as hinkley (sibling comment): I had seen most or all of these ideas prior to the emergence of BTC. I first countered Merkle trees... gosh, forever ago. Got really into cryptography in the 90s. Etc. The idea of creating a currency backed by PoW didn't seem ingenious; it seemed like a particularly silly application of otherwise quite useful technologies. AFAICT it still is mostly useless, except that it made some people very wealthy.

Anyways, I'll go back to yelling at kids to stop picking my tulips.