"To the moon" might be apt. In 1969 the U.S. sent humans to the moon for bragging rights. We ended up learning a lot.<p>Setting aside the value of the blockchain database and the utility or speculative potential of individual coins and tokens... What real world innovation is emerging as a byproduct of crypto?<p>Some examples:
- The Merge taught us decentralized dev teams could heft a major refactor with zero downtime. Impressive.
- Automated liquidations reveal how backward and manual traditional prime brokers mitigate margin risk (i.e. they wait too long to call margin and then explode). Ignore 3AC case. Their lenders were ironically manual.
- Investors don't read or don't understand terms of service and are suseptible to financial predation (see web3 is going great) and the protections of the banking system, however antiquated, are actually pretty nice (eg FDIC insurance vs Celsius "savings" account)
- Risk eventually emerges. Whether way out of the money options, crappy MBS, or coins/tokens, they end up trading like risk assets. When people get scared, they sell. When people need to free up capital, they sell. Suddenly everything is correlated.<p>What other innovations or critical problems are emerging from this vast experience?
We learned that regulations exist to help protect the public from fraud and scams and without them these proliferate at will.<p>We learned that the crucial feature for a working, fully functional currency is not just accounting but also consensus. Allowing anyone to create their own currency is a poor way to reach a consensus.