Thanks for your reply, food for thought. I take your point about uncolateralized loans, although I believe there is some interesting work going on with zero knowledge proofs that can help to assess creditworthiness without revealing sensitive information.

It's an interesting time: we're seeing mainstream adoption of blockchain and crypto technologies at the same time that shitcoin madness is trending.

The basic concepts behind smart contracts are sound and enable efficient transactions and alternative economic systems, this is why I believe we'll increasingly see major institutions adopting it.

As far as community and user empowerment and creating alternative economic ecosystems, it will inevitably take some time to realize effective systems and usage models. I think there is huge potential, still early days.

Thanks for the healthy scepticism though, I probably need more of it!