> While I agree society needs to strive for better and the people building the systems should make an effort to do so, the reality of our current existence makes that very difficult. If being altruistic doesn't put food on the table, it's a hard sell unless you are dealing with those who have already achieved financial independence.
People who benefit from cryptocurrencies are not those who have a problem with "putting food on the table", at all. These are people who are usually already rich and want to invest money, or businesses (like Tesla, etc.)
Globally, financial independence problem will be solved, I suspect, only when the general level of economic prosperity will be sufficient to pay $5k/mo PPP of universal global income, worldwide. Cryptocurrencies don't really near this moment at all, they just increase inequality and have enormous environmental externalities.
> It is often the middle players that are responsible for taking advantage of someone, perpetuating a fraud, or just driving up the costs.
If you look soberly, you realise that these are not problems at all, in the grand scheme of things. Fraud is not a systemic problem, % of transactions that are fraudulent is vanishing (e. g., it is reported to be 8.4p per every 100£ in the UK in this report: https://www.ukfinance.org.uk/system/files/Fraud%20The%20Facts%202019%20-%20FINAL%20ONLINE.pdf). And this is not to mention all fraud which was made possible by cryptocurrencies, e. g. ransomware. Regarding costs: who exactly is driving them up, Visa or banks who process interbank transactions? Visa charges several percent (which often return to you anyway as cashback), and the bank transaction fees are minuscule in the cost structure of pizza you order, or a house you rent, etc.
If we return to the original post, these "problems" are also very similar to the "incredible triumph", as Balaji put it, "because a million dollars is the kind of thing people fight over and disagree on. There’s essentially no dispute on who owns what BTC." This is a rich-people and company problem, not ordinary people's problem.
So, to me, it seems that cryptocurrency proponents invent such stories about the usefulness of cryptocurrencies as afterthoughts only to conceal from themselves and others that their real incentives, which are their personal profits.
