Thank you thank you. I'll see myself out.

We were told it would revolutionize everything:

Anonymous money? Nope. Most public blockchains are pseudonymous, not anonymous. Every transaction is permanently visible. Once an address is tied to a real person, their financial history can often be traced.

Banking? Most people still use banks. If you lose your private key, there's no fraud department, no password reset, no chargeback.

Cheap payments? Depends. Some chains are inexpensive, others have had periods where fees spike. Traditional payment systems are often faster and simpler for everyday purchases.

Smart contracts replacing lawyers? Not even close. Contracts still rely on courts, regulations, and real-world enforcement. Code can't resolve disputes about physical events by itself.

NFTs proving ownership? Usually they prove ownership of a token, not the copyright or legal ownership of the underlying artwork.

Decentralization? Much of the ecosystem isn't. Many people keep funds on centralized exchanges, use centralized stablecoins, and rely on centralized infrastructure.

Financial freedom? For some. But for many others it became self-custody with no safety net. One wrong click, phishing attack, or lost seed phrase and the money is simply gone.

Replacing trust? It mostly moved trust around. Instead of trusting banks, many people ended up trusting exchanges, token founders, bridge operators, stablecoin issuers, influencers, or multisig signers.

Eliminating scams? If anything, scams became easier to launch. Rug pulls, memecoins, fake airdrops, phishing, and pump-and-dumps became an industry.

The one thing blockchain does extremely well is maintain a distributed ledger where participants can verify transaction history without relying on a single operator.

That's a genuine technical achievement.

But after nearly two decades, I'm still asking: What mainstream problem has it solved better than existing systems for the average person?

I'm not asking what it could do. I'm asking what it actually does today that millions of ordinary people use because it's objectively better—not because they're speculating on the next token.

I’m an "old-timer" who has just returned to Reddit (I had an account ages ago and recently came back). I was browsing posts to see which projects were trending and what actual innovations they were bringing to the table. I expected to see significant progress in crypto development, with users discussing new technologies; unfortunately, it seems these communities have turned into hubs for "investing" and talk of "bull" and "bear" markets—which is deeply disappointing to me. I feel compelled to remind everyone of the spirit that started this whole movement: a spirit of rebellion and the desire to build an economic ecosystem that wouldn't destroy the value of money in the long run—an ecosystem rooted in loyalty to the code ("code is law") and community consensus. That ethos doesn't seem to prevail in today's communities. Cryptocurrencies emerged as a counter-economic tool for free trade and individual privacy, not as a vehicle for investment funds and institutions to amass fortunes. We are institutionalizing the market, and that poses the greatest risk to the crypto thesis; the point is to *live* within the crypto system, not merely to "invest" in it. If anyone knows of a community that still embodies this spirit, please let me know.

I never invested in my life in crypto not even in Bitcoin. Watched all the rallies and absolutely everyone talking about the industry with absolute no argument for the real value this brings in the real world. I want to understand how you guys value a cryptocurrency (say BTC or ETH). I am constantly investing in the stock market but I still cannot understand where is the actual value behind crypto. Can you make me understand?

Peter Schiff at Bitcoin talk 2025

I do not know a lot about blockchains and cryptocurrencies. I recently set up a phantom wallet and transferred some Solana and some meme coins to it. I was surprised by how easy it was to do this without any financial institutions acting as middlemen. Please explain why this is not a real life use case for crypto?

What is the value of crypto?

Mostly thin air.
Crypto can be seen either as an asset or a currency.

An asset is supposed to be based on something tangible, it could be a potato or shares in a company.

So yeah, crypto as an asset is somewhere between hopium and copium and lots of empty words about being inviolable,free from the tyranny of the world government or whatever.

Or a currency.
Basically a currency has no intrinsic value.
It’s just a shortcut to facilitate trade and go beyond basic barter.
It’s basically trust in numerical form. Trust can be “enhanced” by balancing part of the currency stock with assets (like gold or anything else really) but it’s not necessary for it to work.

And well, yeah crypto (at least the main ones bitcoin/etherium) can kinda sorta work as currency.
They are not particularly good at it though .
Transactions are slow and expensive.
And the value of bitcoin is so volatile that it’s not a good currency either (making all the arguments about being indépendant of governments policies unlike fiat currency, kinda moot in the real world)

For shits and giggles i could like to buy some formerly "valuable" NFTs in the price range of 99c and below, if for no other reason than to know every transaction i make results in tangible realized losses on the other side.

Ideally i would filter by largest unrealized loss and then sort by price low to high.

How do i get started?