It takes decades to see the impact. It almost never takes a decade to see the use, and that's what people are deriding. Crypto doesn't really solve a problem that needed solving and it is often the wrong solution for many things it's used for. All at a very high cost.
Cryptocurrency hasn't really brought much in the way of new technology to the table.
You're saying it's useful because it's in use because it's useful.
If you study the history of technology, its ultimate impact is never manifest within a decade. It took decades for the Gutenberg Printing Press to spread around Europe and centuries for the consequences to see be seen (Protestant Reformation, newspapers, birth of the modern media, on and on.) This is the case for pretty much every other invention.
> Crypto doesn't really solve a problem that needed solving
Again, this may be because the problem hasn't arisen yet or isn't obvious yet. We have only just begun the era of networked communications.
It did not take years for it to be seen as incredibly useful and it was clear fairly early what the use for it was.
Saying the problem isn't obvious yet is bizarre. The printing press's use case was apparent immediately, even if the extent of its impact wasn't.
You're conflating impact and problem space conveniently.
There are clear use cases for blockchain which have been laid out ad infinitum by other people. There are also downsides. This makes it pretty much the same as any other technology, e.g. the combustion engine.
There are only two periods of time that can be commented on.
From inception to the present. From the present to future predictions.
The former hasn't shown a use that can't be solved better by other methods.
The latter hasn't shown any either.
The printing press on day 1 had a mission statement that had no equal. So did the combustion engine. It did the current thing faster and better.
I don't know why this is so controversial, but I suspect it's because of #2 in my original comment.
Again, I didn't say that crypto will become extremely useful and important in the future, but simply that declaring it useless or unimportant now is foolish and unlike virtually every other technology.
"The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." - William Gibson
It is, but that was because far fewer people were well educated so they didn't really see the need, and innovations tended to be physical objects that can only travel as far and as fast as the transport of the time will take them. Today most people in the developed world are very well educated (relative to the 1600s) and things based on computers travel at pretty much the speed of light. Things, particularly in tech, obviously move faster now.
The second bit worth noting if you think crypto is more to follow the Gutenberg path, is that investing in him turned out to be a terrible decision: he made things which were tangibly useful from the start but lost money doing it...
Crypto solves the same problem.
Crypto doesn't solve this (except in very limited circumstances where recipients can buy everything they need with crypto). It's just a layer in the middle, and as it's a layer which requires additional exchanges, it's not more efficient except where it provides a loophole in foreign exchange regulations or where parties with a vested interest in crypto have chosen to subsidise the exchange costs.