This sounds like nonsense. Cryptocurrencies allow people to perform secure financial transactions without relying on central banking systems, and to use the blockchain for things like decentralized time-stamping, automated escrow, prediction markets, online voting, and other services. There’s a huge amount of social value to these innovations.
> an environmental disaster
What specifically are you referring to?
> should have never left the research stage
I’m glad it did. In addition to their utility as decentralized mediums of exchange, they have inspired a lot of research in the fields of game theory and cryptography, including work on voting protocols, mechanism design, and secure multiparty computation. I think the world is much better off with this newfound knowledge, though you seem to think otherwise.
> As for Uber, their only innovation so far
Their innovation was revolutionizing ridesharing and ride-hailing. In 2015, and in the United States alone, they created $6.8 billion of consumer surplus [1], a surplus which has only increased since then. Over 95 million people use it on a monthly basis [2], with 14 million trips completed each day [3]. It is popular with the public, especially the young [4]. There is huge demand for services like Uber and Lyft to become more widely available. See for example [5].
You clearly have an axe to grind and it’s clouding your ability to evaluate things objectively.
[1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w22627
[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/833743/us-users-ride-sha...
[3] https://www.uber.com/en-CA/newsroom/company-info/
[4] https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/canadian-millennial...