FWIW, in my own usage of crypto, the lack of central authority is exactly why it is used. I don't really care that other people are just hodl-ing their funny money in someone else's wallet. Crypto, outside of an exchange, means I can send money to anyone I want, and no other entity can prevent that.
Yes it would.
There is a chance (in my estimate, negligible) that my anecdote is an extreme outlier, but I still dare state with confidence that most forks today are designed in a way that less than 99% of users end up sticking them in their eyeballs.
People using forks for the unconventional and usually unintended purpose of impaling their eyes* are a tiny minority of fork users and thus changing fork designs to encourage the intended method of use is not considered a high priority. Most people are naturally disinclined to pierce themselves, particularly in such a delicate part of their face, and as such the design of a typical fork with its pointy tines directs users to avoid this particular usage mistake.
The thesis stated above in the thread was, that cryptocurrencies are very commonly used in a way that defeats their intended purpose of decentralization. It seems reasonable to assume there is a flaw in contemporary cryptocurrency implementations that encourages this kind of use, or at the very least, doesn't discourage it very strongly.
* Excluding specialized forks for non-mainstream audiences such as very young children
This is basically it. Crypto-currencies are essentially tool to evade financial regulations. The price that you pay for that is a high operational risk and a lack of property rights.
The thing is, users define the market. If we were talking about a traditional "product", if 99% of users used a product wrong, that product would be considered an abject failure, at least from a UX / messaging standpoint with a clear mismatch between user wants/needs and product capabilities.
The average crypto buyer buys crypto because they want to make money. The average crypto buyer doesn't give a shit about decentralization or removal of bureaucracy. The average crypto buyer is getting exactly what they came for.
The way it's actually used completely destroys that part of its value, but don't let reality get in the way of a good investment opportunity. I think if you set up a coin that doesn't use a distributed ledger, and instead uses an SQL database, you wouldn't get buy-in from the ~tulip~crypto fanatics because it doesn't line up with aforementioned mythos.
I would go so far as to argue it's the entire aspect of the value proposition. Take away decentralization and all you've got is a poorly architected, inefficient, unwieldy PayPal.
The people in this thread understand this value prop, but for a significant portion of crypto investors, the value prop is gains.
It may be true that some casual crypto investors are interested because of the decentralization aspect, but that same user wants a PayPal-like experience. Most are not willing to deal with the complexity of doing it "right", and most of the non-technical people I know who buy crypto do it for the gains, not for the defi.
In effect, this makes decentralization nothing more than a marketing promise, and the reality is exactly what you said - a poorly architected, inefficient, unwieldy PayPal. Sure, this system is capable of much more, and realizing the "true" value prop of decentralization, but that doesn't matter much if users are in it for other reasons.
If users were doing it "right", or for sake of argument, let's say users are forced to do it right, I suspect they would just stop participating, bringing valuation down with them.
No, this is extremely false. The miners/stakers can prevent that by blacklisting your wallet address. You might be thinking of privacy coins which are a very small subset of cryptocurrencies that are hard to use because of the security requirements, and are extremely impractical for most people who aren't criminals, and they only really work correctly if everyone using them has perfect opsec which currently they don't. And also a powerful entity who really wants to stop you can still prevent your transactions just by attacking and disabling the network itself through traditional or non-technical means, such as infiltrating the foundation that manages the project.