Esteemed software developer Drew DeVault just published another one of his signature rants (sadly sworn to be his last one) in the blog post aptly titled "Cryptocurrency is an abject disaster" (https://drewdevault.com/2021/04/26/Cryptocurrency-is-a-disaster.html). There are fair bits of criticism, albeit mostly concerning just bitcoin and its forks, and some food for thought for current and future developers in fintech. I recognize the problem of mining on CI and I understand author's frustration with it. What I don't understand is lashing out at the invention instead of the specific people who abuse it. Moreover, practically every argument listed in the post is stale and has been repeated ad nauseam for more than 10 years already at the same time as the first cryptocurrency was publicly declared dead by the media more than 400 times (https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/). Alas, the cryptocurrency market is still rising as I write this. If Bill Gates couldn't put an end to it, Drew DeVault certainly can't either. It's rising despite everyone in this market already knowing cryptocurrencies suck. It is taken into account as developers use this knowledge to deal with the problems it brings and strive for better technology in the future. It would be absurd to say this industry doesn't attract a lot of malicious or overly greedy actors, it naturally does by the virtue of being novel, misunderstood and unregulated. On the contrary, it is just as absurd to say that greed is a principal fault of the entire industry and isn't solvable by making an attempt of understanding the idea, its merit, not being a bastard and not supporting bastards.

But the more I think about it, the more sceptical I become that I'm replying to a point that's actually argued. What people who passionately hate cryptocurrency argue is that humanity doesn't need cryptocurrency not only because the technology is problematic, but because it has no value and its price is merely driven by being the Ponzi scheme. To me, this is an obvious nonsense, but it occured to me that it might be pointless to dispute. Not because I lack counterarguments, but because the counterarguments I could use have nothing to do with the initial topic. Cryptocurrencies have value because they effectively liberate global economy by providing a working digital decentralized infrastructure without any government involvement and banking system. If you don't see why it's crucial or you disagree that it is, we have the fundamental ideological discrepancy which goes a long way outside of cryptocurrencies and is much harder to handle, involving a significant library of philosophical and political literature of the last couple of centuries.

All in all, cryptocurrency is not going anywhere, because it **does** have an inherent value, whether you agree with it or not, and the people who oppose it lead a futile fight against progress, which they will ultimately lose. Don't sweat it.

Requested disclosure: I have recently sold my cryptocurrency stakes for a mild profit and don't hold any at the moment. I'm paid to work on cryptocurrency projects.