Idk, after having been in the crypto space in the past, I’m still pretty tempted to call it almost universally a scam.

Regardless of the environmental impacts (which has been solved by some blockchains, like you said), I just think it exposes users to a completely unacceptable amount of risk for very little gain.

You’re required to be in complete charge of your own data security, and if your private key is stolen, you lose your life savings with no recourse. If you make a minor slip up and give permission to the wrong website, you’ll lose everything in your hot wallet. If there’s an error in a smart contract you use (which has happened many times), then all the money you’ve given to it could be taken from under your nose. You can’t even, like, refund transactions – there’s no consumer protections at all.

But like, to what end? What’s the actual benefit of using crypto? Sure, you can make anonymous transactions with XMR, that’s a tangible use case. But what’s the actual benefit to using something like Ethereum?