> There is no specific need for bitcoin in the world, it's a solution looking for a problem.
lol, it literally solves 100% of everything that is mechanically wrong with modern society.
Bitcoin, or something much like it, is the standing Great Filter test of our species.
We either progress into the next level of economic organization with a sound money network of some kind, or we devolve into an eternal stagnation and death.
We cannot have an anti-merit civilization, that is contrary to the basic precepts of evolutionary survival of the fittest.
Disconnecting the motivational network which organizes behavior from actual human performance will only ensure anti-survival behavior dominates until we are all dead.
We can hope its bitcoin, so that it can happen in our lifetimes. Perhaps some future innovation will be much the same, and restore the social value network to a semblance of order in some distant future.
Until then, we are doomed to repeat cycles of war, civil unrest, boom and bust cycles, and ever increasing wealth inequality. Pollution and waste will increase astronomically with no correction. Things we used to do easily, such as building bridges or other infrastructure, will become increasingly untenable, and our environment will decay around us. The oceans will be full of the decaying monuments of wind turbines, lush valleys will be full of heavy metals from broken solar cells, the ocean will be a soup of plastics and garbage, and the land will be a version of "idocracy" with a species seemingly evolving back into an apelike existence.