In a way Letterman absolutely had great points: you don't need to watch baseball on your computer, you have a radio for that. You don't need access to this information via a computer, you can use magazines for that.
Looking back on this almost thirty years later, what was missing is the limitations and the consequences.
Yes, you could use your radio. But you were limited to being able to listen to certain times, or certain places. And only baseball and maybe a few sports.
Yes, you could get that information, but only through the magazine.
What the internet did was lower the barrier to this. 30 years later, and I can watch esport championships hosted in South Korea months ago, for free, after my kids go to bed.
And what were the consequences for print journalism?
I think you need the same idea for evaluating crypto: yes, you can obviously do many of the things crypto can do, without crypto. But what are the limitations? And what will be the consequences?