> From Bitcoin, to Ethereum, to Uniswap, there is a strong development of the early ideas and technology.
To do what useful thing, that isn't crime?
> From what I can tell massive segments of finance are just money games. This is a form of that, which is a real and tremendous market.
For what, except speculation and crime? What application? It's been twelve years. Crypto is almost as old as the smartphone.
> A natural progression that people who say “high frequency trading provides no value” or “banks shouldn’t be allowed to deal in derivatives” will hate.
Derivatives have obvious economic value. I can go into a room and write an economic model for them and it will agree with everyone else's because there's an objective theory that can be applied to get answers (and I have successfully done this in the past).
Any economic model for the value of cryptocurrency gives it a zero value.
More, crypto people don't have any competing valuation model or theory or explanation or anything. The values for all these coins simply come from nowhere.
> It seems nonsensical, until you go learn what all these quants are getting paid millions per year to do for hedge funds and you think to yourself “oh, it’s a similar thing. There is demand for this.”
You are wrong. I did this for a living for years.
All you are doing is adding the present value of future cash flows together to get the value. The tricky part is dealing with volatility, for which there's an "arbitrage-free" (no magic cash) model called Black-Scholes - and then there are a zillion details.
But cryptocurrencies _have no cash flows._ No cryptocoin produces or destroys fiat currency. The _only_ way you make $1 out of your crypto is if some Greater Fool buys your cryptocoin for more than you paid for it.
Eventually, there won't be a Greater Fool, then everyone will be left with a crappy and expensive payment system with huge transaction costs and nothing else. Everyone will rush for the doors, but there's no liquidation value and no fundamental value and no market makers.