Crypto is a decade-long exercise in teaching programmers why the mechanism used to update numbers in databases is the boring part of a money system, and why governance, policy-making and physical territory control are relevant.
What it really does is highlight inadequacies in education and discourse, and how intransparent "how things really work" (and by extension, what the tough problems are) can be even to intelligent people.
Bottom line: Technology is just a tool and an ineffective substitute for the human aspects of "society". Those who tend to think otherwise may be highly trained but still rather naive, under-educated and operating outside their element --- ideal marks for a good con artist.
What it really does is highlight inadequacies in education and discourse, and how intransparent "how things really work" (and by extension, what the tough problems are) can be even to intelligent people.