$625M worth of ETH drained on Axie Infinity's Ronin Network

The savings associated with transactions fees (reasonable for very large spends - utterly ridiculous for small amounts, even today after the major drops, at more than 1.7 USD/tx)?

The savings associated with double spend fraud that occurs if you don't delay the transaction for 3 to 6 blocks even though you say it's final (hint - that's not true, and waiting is a large downside for prompt processing at a point of sale)

The savings associated with being literally dragged into court because it turns out that fraud is still a thing, and the legal system still matters, and despite you saying that the transaction has settled - the courts can and WILL disagree?

I just don't see it. I see a very nice way to send money to folks who are working dark markets and understand escrow (which re-introduces the risk that your transaction isn't actually settled), and a really shitty transaction method for basically everything else.

We already have SWIFT and networks layered under humans in the fiat system, so now we're just pushing more complex algorithms. In the case of block chains, I'd say the concept of asymmetric cryptography is an improvement over mutual trust in secure backoffice communication channels.

I'm not into crypto (still thinking it's a solution waiting for a problem), but arguing that banks can do reversals isn't fair. Someone moving fiat quickly between banks will make it hard to reverse as well. I can't imagine a bank is going to just say "I guess they stole it from you, transferred it to us, but then withdrew from us. Let me go ahead and reimburse you anyway." That smells like a insurance case, no matter the underlying algorithms.

The answer to your question is encoded in the very first block of the very first blockchain.

> The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block

Some people feel like they weren't being represented by the "justice" you're talking about, so they built their own thing where all the rules are publicly viewable, and consensus is run by the community. It seemed like a weird idea at the time, but the idea got popular, and people who like this new system have moved about two trillion dollars of global wealth into it.

If you like the old way money was managed, by big institutions doing everything they could to extract wealth from the general public with no legal repercussions, then the good news is that the old system still exists. There are just some other options now too.

Also, the idea that all cryptocurrencies are some laissez-faire Randian wet dream is simply not true. An extremely diverse array of crypto governance mechanisms are being experimented with. Many run by humans, all with their own interpretations of "justice", which you can read up on and participate in at will. Governance proposals reclaim funds judged to be unfairly allocated all the time. I doubt that will happen here, because Ethereum governance is generally very harsh on people who suck at testing code, but every person who lost money here knew exactly what they were getting in to when they chose to participate.