Agreed. I have now been asking this question for nearly a decade: what economic value does cryptocurrency deliver today? So far, I have found no good answer to that.
(Note that speculation does not create value; it at best transfers it from bet-winners to bet-losers. Crime seems to be the next-most-popular use case, and that is also generally net negative economically. And not also that the future isn't today. Which seems obvious, but every time I ask this I get a lot of fantasies about the future.)
That hasn't stopped an awful lot of people from raising money and launching ICOs for products that haven't worked and often couldn't possibly work. For example, see David Gerard's excellent ongoing dissection of Kodakcoin: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/tag/kodakcoin/
(Note that speculation does not create value; it at best transfers it from bet-winners to bet-losers. Crime seems to be the next-most-popular use case, and that is also generally net negative economically. And not also that the future isn't today. Which seems obvious, but every time I ask this I get a lot of fantasies about the future.)
That hasn't stopped an awful lot of people from raising money and launching ICOs for products that haven't worked and often couldn't possibly work. For example, see David Gerard's excellent ongoing dissection of Kodakcoin: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/tag/kodakcoin/