Maybe it doesnt scale? lets try it. Maybe 99% of people dont want to use it? Cool, lets try it.
We don't have to be 100% better, we have to be 0.1% better. I think that is absolutely in reach. I think that will be transformational for many. It will not bring us utopia, it might have bad side effects, hopefully the good outweighs the bad.
And is this not spurred from market desires too? How do we know the difference between genuine forces of innovation and a temporary trend?
I remember using the internet for the first time in the late 90s, it was slow and clunky and magical. We had twenty years of silicon valley startup culture, there was some fun there, but it is so tired. Crypto-communities are the most fun i've had on the internet in a long long time. And the DeFi/DAO/Ethereum stacks feel magical.
Maybe i'm wrong and it is nothing in the long term, but maybe we dont have to assume the authority of the legacy system is legitimate. Maybe the feeling of liberation it brings with it, and the love in the community, will drive the space to continue to out-perform the markets, out-innovate the fintech startups, and out-last the legacy systems.
But I think you are projecting yourself onto the regular citizen.
The thing which up to now the crypto world has managed to capture about the regular citizen is its fear of inflation and strong preference for deflation which allows him to increase his net worth without doing any work, just by sheer deflationary force baked in the protocol.
From a purely financial return standpoint: If DeFi/DAO/Eth is what the internet was back in the days, then it's IRC.
IRC didn't make any money. Facebook which is the dictionary definition of tired and not fun...well it will smash the record as the fastest Company from 0 to 1T.
So the equivalent to that would be betting on the Bank which decides to make Buterin the CEO or the maybe a new properly regulated fintech startup which wears the mantle of DeFi and the PR of Eth, but it's really an old school intermediary.
I get what you are saying about fun, but fun and finances shouldn't be mixed, in my opinion. Because you'll never know what other people who are not yourself would consider fun and if they'd jump on board to legitimize the community and have the token/stock you invested in appreciate
The 99% is represented by the regular normie citizen who likes intermediaries because they don't want the responsibility.
The legacy financial system with intermediaries didn't emerge from some evil dictators pushing it onto the world.
It spurred from the market desires, and the market is made up of the regular normie citizens AKA the 99%
Despite what the headlines say, the 99% as a whole controls 99% of the total wealth and they dictate the rules