Don't want to duck your question but: the reason this is hard to get a handle on is that it's really complicated.

It's not that the premises and protocols themselves are complicated — sure, they're technically sophisticated, but they can be explained simply. The problem lies in that it is very hard to predict the economic consequences and security guarantees of the various consensus mechanisms. Frankly, if Bitcoin hadn't been working flawlessly for the past 12 years very few people would guess that it would work.