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SBF’s prison sentence marks the end of the crypto grift era — so what’s next?
Nearly everything else that's being built on or enabled by blockchains replaces something that's already being done fairly well.
The sentencing brings to an end the most recent era of crypto, which was characterized by greater-fool get-rich-quick schemes on the way up — investors were lured in with promises of impossibly high returns on everything from digitally watermarked images to simple interest payments on the token of the week — and fraud investigations and indictments on the way down. The problem with this point of view is that developers have been building a wide variety of applications on top of Ethereum and Solana and other Layer-1 blockchains for years now, and the only economically viable purpose any of them have served is speculation. It’s also useful for sending remittances without having to pay outrageous fees for international money changers, and — sometimes — as a digital replacement for suitcases of cash for all kinds of underground economic activity.
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