if 'they' wanted bitcoin squashed flat do you think they'd come up with something so incredibly convoluted and hard to understand?
if 'they' went all out they would come up with something that your grandparents could use. lots of friendly colors and big buttons and very public reassurance of backing from somewhere.
ethereum is quite clearly overreaching computer science with a big dollop of greed on top.
But that's part of crypto. In my mind, crypto gets its value from the megalomania of the project it carries. Bitcoin was already a totally deluded idea: "replace money world wide". How can you beat such a deluded mega-projection ? Well, ethereum is going to replace all law, judges, lawyers contracts and agreements world wide, (and yes, as a side effect, can also replace that small thing, money, if it wanted to).
If you want people to throw value at a token that doesn't mean, in itself, anything, you need irrational exhuberance, and you have to promise something mindbogglingly great. "replacing money" sounded big. Replacing law and contract, sounds bigger. The bigger, and the more deluded, the better.
But the next delusion is already in the making in crypto: "replacing social contacts" and "replacing knowledge".
I guess the next layer, after that, is: "replacing life".
Bitcoin could successfully replace gold, not so sure about actual currency where you can make fast and cheap decentralized payments as satoshi wanted.
So bitcoin is no delusion if you approach it as a way to store value out of the reach of the banks.
Ethereum on the other hand is incredibly ambitious and this may be his pitfall.
But who doesn't regret buying Eth when it was 1, 10, 20... dollars? What if it goes to 100?
Im ok with whatever makes me more money.
Yeah would make sense bitcoin replacing gold, litecoin silver and ether replacing law and contracts. Medium level law firms near where I live are already looking into Bitcoin and blockchain because they know things will change in the future.
Now only the question is what coin will replace fiat money...