If the high #tech scam artists (including the sainted John Carmack, whom I remember once bloviating about the opportunities for "creating value" with blockchain scams, for value is yet another of those semi-mystical abstractions which beguiles both computer geeks and grifters into finance and investments) were actually fully HONEST about what "the blockchain" is and how fundamentally boring and unimaginative it is—basically all those blockchains are being used merely to devise miniaturized imitations of existing financial instruments, like they were dealing in software-emulated play money or lottery tickets—then they'd have no scam. Ledgers are not fun and exciting, whether they're on paper or in a computer.
But deliberately malfunctioning ledgers, tricky double-dealing ledgers, ledgers written with magic paper and magic ink that can be made to disappear at a finger-snap—now that is FUN, to a certain specimen of criminal. And thus #crypto / #cryptocurrency / NFTs / Web3 garbage has been a huge domain for speculators and confidence tricksters, not to mention desperate suckers who have been sold on these things as the only way to save themselves from insolvency and ruin.
(cont'd)