The idea of a cheap, universal, anonymous digital currency itself is old (e.g. eCash and Neuromancer in the '80s, Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon in the '90s).
It was inevitable that someone would try implementing it once the internet was widespread - especially as long as most banks are rent-seeking actors exploiting those relying on currency exchanges, as long as many national currencies are directly tied to failing political and economic systems, and as long as the un-banking and financially persecution of undesirables was a threat.
Doing it so extremely decentralized and with a the whole proof-of-work shtick tacked on top was not inevitable and arguably not a good way to do it, nor the cancer that has grown on top of it all...
Imagine new coordination technology X. We can remove any specific tech reference to remove prior biases. Say it is a neutral technology that could enable new types of positive coordination as well as negative.
3 camps exist.
A: The grifters. They see the opportunity to exploit and individually gain.
B: The haters. They see the grifters and denigrate the technology entirely. Leaving no nuance or possibility for understanding the positive potential.
C: The believers. They see the grift and the positive opportunity. They try and steer the technology towards the positive and away from the negative.
The basic formula for where the technology ends up is -2(A)-(B) +C. It's a bit of a broad strokes brush but you can probably guess where to bin our current political parties into these negative categories. We need leadership which can identify and understand the positive outcomes and push us towards those directions. I see very little strength anywhere from the tech leaders to politicians to the social media mob to get us there. For that, we all suffer.
Lol. Permissionless payments certainly have utility. Making it harder for governments to freeeze/seize your assets has utility. Buying stuff the government disallows, often illegitimately, has value. Currency that can't be inflated has value.
Any outside of pure utility, they have tons of ideological reason to exist outside scams and fraud. Your inability to imagine or dismissal of those is telling as to your close-mindedness.
Shouldn't you have already moved on to AI hype? The fact that you're still worshipping crypto is telling as to your close-mindedness.
> Currency that can't be inflated... [seriously? the fact that you didn't even recognize that as a statement of faith, well...]
> Outside of pure utility, they have tons of ideological reason to exist
I mean, maybe you're in a repressive regime and really need a way to fight the system. But I'm guessing you just have faith in crypto ideology. Either way, have a great day!
Please explain how bitcoin can be inflated
And recognizing a movement has ideological reasons while making no claim as to the strength or rationality of those reasons has nothing to do with faith
Make up a stable coin and pretend it has real money behind it while refusing to submit to an independent audit.
Any other requests, buddy?
Yes, doing crimes is indeed a valid use case.
The only way I can get to the "crypto is inevitable" take relies on the scams and fraud as the fundamental drivers. These things don't have any utility otherwise and no reason to exist outside of those.
Scams and fraud are such potent drivers that perhaps it was inevitable, but one could imagine a more competent regulatory regime that nipped this stuff in the bud.
nb: avoiding financial regulations and money laundering are forms of fraud