Better phrasing would be niche legitimate use cases not worth supporting, at least not domestically, if you’re America, the EU, China, India or Japan.
Why not? Having open source protocols that compete with PayPal and VISA and aren’t funded and controlled by central states can be a positive thing.
Sure. That isn't what crypto has become. After ten years, it's fair to call it given the amount of fraud, dishonesty and resource misallocation. Again, not saying ban it. Just tax it, regulate it closely, and keep an eye on the folks doing it to make sure they're focussing on doing it abroad.
To what practical end?
I think exploration should continue. But in the academic, not product, space. Crypto has the potential to be toxic. Licensing regimes for potentially-toxic products is highly precedented.
> Having open source protocols that compete with PayPal and VISA and aren’t funded and controlled by central states can be a positive thing.
I personally like that there is another choice than just yet-another-centralized-and-cumbersome system.
Huge advancements in zero knowledge cryptography have been made in the last year. Ethereum activated Proof of Stake in September. New DeFi primitives are released regularly.
It's actually hard to keep up with all of the research and releases which is why your comment is so perplexing unless it was made in bad faith.
What people mean here is that general innovation is dead in token industry, finding a new niches, new industries. All attempts have dies in 2018 or so. Decentralized storage, decentralized compute (with blockchain), decentralized LoRaWan, decentralized identities, decentralized off-chain ownership and so on and so forth. All failed spectacularly.
The only innovation remaining is simply more advanced instruments for scammers and illegal finance operations. That is innovation, but not particularly interesting for mass market.
Strong emphasis on "domestically". If you want to send money from one of those entities to another one, it gets hairy quite fast. I remember a time before SEPA and it was horrifying.
You can still have horrifying experiences with SEPA today. A German company once required that I send them CHF to their German IBAN. Which breaks several of the conditions for smooth SEPA transactions. IIRC for something like 30 Euro in value I had to pay 10 Euro in fees.
Wordwide is also problematic. If you can PayPal helps, but PayPal is its own hell, as many shop owners know. Credit Cards work but I can't send money via CC to a friend on the other side of the world, or can I?
I don't think Bitcoin or crypto is it but it would really be beneficial if we had some kind of money that is a first class citizen of the internet.