> Crypto could have been special. Sadly it turned into stocks
This is the libertarian version of "true communism has never been tried". Of course people wanted to reinvent the financial system, it was profitable to do so.
Not really. True cryptocurrencies were tried. They even work. Monero is the truest cryptocurrency, it's what bitcoin should have been since the beginning and it already works.
The tragedy is nobody's actually using it because everyone's too busy feeding their money into literal banks and speculating with it.
It's as much of a tragedy that people don't use Monero as people who go walking down the street and don't stop to look under every rock. They could do it, but not sure the point.
Once very large financial interests (those capable of destabilising international trade, funding transnational smuggling operations, or --gulp!-- financing war) are attracted to an opportunity, the game is way beyond the scope of inconsequential small-scale adopters. The latter will be wistful about their dashed hopes.
The libertarian ideology, like many others, is at best an extraordinarily naive interpretation of the individual and the world.
"Libertarians are like house cats: absolutely convinced of their fierce independence while utterly dependent on a system they don't appreciate or understand."
This is the libertarian version of "true communism has never been tried". Of course people wanted to reinvent the financial system, it was profitable to do so.