We're over ten years into it, and it's completely clear that there are just two killer apps for cryptocurrencies: "parabolic" speculation, and crime, including money laundering, cuber ransoms, tax evasion, evasion of currency regulations, and purchases of contraband like drugs and weapons.
Both of these are very bad for our society. And of course there's the horrific cost in power and in electronics hardware.
In all standard models of economics, cryptocurrencies have an intrinsic value of zero. And no one has proposed any other model of economics that explains why cryptocurrencies have any value at all, or why different cryptocurrencies have different values.
Cryptocurrency will eventually return to at or near its intrinsic value when one of two things happens.
All cryptocurrencies require ready access to enormous and almost completely reliable quantities of hardware, bandwidth, and power.
The idea that governments will passively stand by and see their fiat currencies become worthless is simply ridiculous. And rational governments that care about their citizens will care about the crime and mania aspects.
If crypto does become a real threat to fiat, then governments of the world will likely ban it. and enforce it. If there is no non-criminal way to turn your BTC into $. €, or ¥, its value will plummet, and of course, the huge amounts of power, bandwidth and hardware you need will make your mining rig stick out like a sore thumb.
In the medium-term, historically speaking, unless we suddenly get lawful, conservationist governments who will treat the climate emergency like an emergency and immediately ban wasteful bullshit like cryptocurrencies, we're going to see a global collapse due to the Four Horsemen of rising temperatures, resource exhaustion, pollution and mass extinction (of non-human, non-domesticated species), the Four who already ride roughshod over our globe unchecked.
And then farewell to your unlimited power, hardware and bandwidth. Farewell to your information workers, and your fruit out of season, and your eight billion human population, and a million of the world's species.
In that scenario, paper currency will do exceptionally well. The recent "printing" of money has been entirely digital! Everyone will still be able to recognize a valid $20 and the equipment to forge them won't be around.
And of course Internet Dunning-Krugerands won't have any value at all in this world.
