This. I'm still shocked that reputable VC firms like a16z are completely throwing their weight behind cryptocurrencies without even a slight bit of skepticism.
I recently listened to an a16z podcast where they had on a founder of a blockchain hedgefund. It was enlightening to listen to them talk about all the various coins and all the use cases. Chris, in the interview, uses an analogy of this being similar to the beginning of the internet and how you could have invested in either companies or domain names, implying domains are much more of a sure bet. In their mind, buying coins is equivalent to buying domain names. I think this pretty much illustrates their whole view - either force make some bets and be seen as part of the pioneers or miss out and be seen as the late adopting skeptics.
But there are so many fundamental differences that I would argue it's not even in the same realm of similarity. For starters, there is rampant oversupply. Everyone is trying to get into blockchain and trying to initiate an ICO or trying to create their own blockchain. Then there's the actual lack of use cases for the majority of them. Even in the beginning of the internet one thing was clear - it was a breakthrough in how quickly information could be transmitted. It's not very clear what the obvious use case for blockchains are, though proponents will provide a long list of possible use cases.
Take Golem for example. On paper, it looks interesting - it's a token for computing power that's not based on a central controlling entity. So for this to even work there has to be some sort of SDK that "packages" computing work so that computers on the Golem network can ingest it. It's a given that SDK itself is a huge attack surface vector, making every computer on the network vulnerable to a bug that will eventually be found. On top of that, there will be the huge variations in computing power and capacity at any given time ensuring that any critical infrastructure cannot run on it. Let's say you run into a problem, and maybe your output was unexpected. How do you debug? Whom do you contact if things go wrong? I'm willing to bet most people will pay a little more for the benefit of having a central point of contact (like AWS).
There's also the argument for coins being used as "shares" of a company. This is probably the most dangerous use case. There's a reason why regulators exist. They were started to protect the interest of the common man (though now it can be argued they've lost their way but that doesn't mean the answer is to completely abolish them). What's stopping sophisticated scammers conducting fly by offerings and disappearing? It doesn't take much to create a top notch video and create "buzz" around something. This is like Kickstarter on steroids (in the worst possible way).
I'm interested in hearing why I'm wrong, so if you have arguments against any of my points, please reply. I really want to believe in all of this, because that seems like the right thing to do, but something in my brain isn't clicking.