Don't forget the utterly insane amounts of both financial and human capital that have been invested in this space with virtually nothing to show for it. The whole thing is an infinite sinkhole.

Cryptocurrency kind of reminds me of that Star Trek episode where they were going to destroy the Borg by giving them this impossible n-dimensional object to ponder. It had no solution but was infinitely interesting so they would ponder it, and ponder it, enlisting more and more minds in the collective until the entire Borg were occupied doing nothing but considering this shape. Cryptocurrency kind of seems to have done that to hacker culture. It's infinitely technically fascinating and pushes all the right cyber-libertarian buttons so it sucks in more and more resources forever but amounts to nothing.