> a person who loves crypto technologically and agrees with the more cipherpunk roots of bitcoin

Yep, that'd be me too. What gets my blood pressure rising is the sheer amount of coins & tokens available now all of which, bar perhaps a tiny fraction, seem to have no value proposition other than "number go up". To me, NFTs are the nadir of this concept. I struggle to imagine a legitimate use case for any crypto that doesn't involve rapid, frictionless transacting.

For example, there are a couple of fantastic services, like "Cauldron DEX" or "BCHBull" (no affiliation) - smart contracts which allow for trustless swapping of tokens. The concept is genius and the execution here seems very good (to me, non cryptographer) but, again, what can I do with these tokens or coins I've traded except trade them later for some other token or coin?

BCHBull seems to allow exposure to commodities and some fiat currencies - that makes it comparable I suppose to actual currency or commodity speculation which has been going on for centuries. One might still argue "what can I do with all this gold except trade it later for oil?" but, well, that seems to be a weaker criticism.

Agreed, but unironically. US tobacco consumption is at a historic low, while people are dying from an opioid epidemic and fentanyl contamination, and somehow the War on Drugs is nearly unquestioned as good policy? Prosecuting people for making poor health choices is such an extreme and frankly insane idea.

Let's go back to selling Bayer Heroin™ at pharmacies, with sensible regulations. That would better position us to minimize narcotic use over the long term, while also making it safer, and defunding the cartels while we're at it. In the meantime, if someone is going to do drugs, I'm all for them using cryptocurrency to make the process as safe as it can be given the circumstances.

With diamond jewelry, you pay mostly for the manual work of jeweler since folks don't go to jewelry shops to buy a diamond stone alone. If we talk about gold bars, no sophisticated manual work involved, just pouring molten gold into some mold on semi-industrial automated scale.

If you buy sophisticated golden jewelry, you also pay ton for work that nobody else may appreciate. Sure you can get it smelted into something else, but you burn most of the original value, and some more on the change itself.

Inflation, and especially controlled inflation, is much easier with fiat money. Most governments see it as an extremely valuable tool.