And if that happens and a the end of it here's a parallel system or systems on the internet that look a lot like what we have today[1] but exist globally and outside the surveillance and control of governments, then crypto has to some extent succeeded.
How much those systems are controlled by their users rather than just different concentrated groups holding a majority of power and wealth is in some ways a measure of that success. I am not too optimistic about this for bitcoin and systems based on it, but bitcoin is far from the only game in town.
Whether or not the space needs to learn every lesson, no matter how obvious, by regularly losing money reproducing each crisis in turn remains to be seen. As someone who spent a long time in finance and can see that many of the experiments/"products" in crypto are dumb and won't work, I would certainly hope we can do a bit better, but if that's what it takes, so be it.
[1] Hopefully we can at least improve some bits of the actual products and systems along the way as well as getting the basics in place, too.
How much those systems are controlled by their users rather than just different concentrated groups holding a majority of power and wealth is in some ways a measure of that success. I am not too optimistic about this for bitcoin and systems based on it, but bitcoin is far from the only game in town.
Whether or not the space needs to learn every lesson, no matter how obvious, by regularly losing money reproducing each crisis in turn remains to be seen. As someone who spent a long time in finance and can see that many of the experiments/"products" in crypto are dumb and won't work, I would certainly hope we can do a bit better, but if that's what it takes, so be it.
[1] Hopefully we can at least improve some bits of the actual products and systems along the way as well as getting the basics in place, too.