Don't these things move in cycles?
1. The first computers were huge machines that everyone logged into with thin clients
2. Then the PC era where computing became decentralized and all computing took place on a single machine
3. Then the internet, which went back to the thin clients connecting to large central servers
If you believe that the reason for the shift away from decentralization was to enable coordination of multiple PCs so they had access to the same centralized data (for reading or shopping or whatever) then its really not a stretch that distributed consensus algorithms could be a way back to decentralization.
> and no, blockchains don't count for now - if anything, cryptocurrencies are a lesson in just how quickly systems centralize
Not disagreeing with you on the current state, but I believe that is because the people most engaged right now are the same types who day trade penny stocks and options, i.e., low-information high risk seekers. Many of the structures of the cryptocurrency market seem lifted from a student's textbook about how markets can or should work. I see zero discussion of why different structures like open outcry exchanges and centralized regulatory agencies existed originally and what roles they serve now. Maturity, both in the users and the infrastructure, should help this.
I recently had a discussion with a trader-type about why exchanges should exist at all for cryptocurrencies given the volatility cause by a combination of high volume, few market makers, and lots of friction between exchanges. The responses were about price discovery and how would we trade? I don't think they believed me that, as a stock trader, you have almost certainly never traded a stock on an actual exchange and high volatility means its value for economic price discovery is nearly useless.
But please resist the urge to conclude that what is happening in the cryptocurrency markets has any bearing on the potential of distributed consensus algorithms.