> "It'd be foolish to sit here and try to defend every cryptocurrency in the world or everybody who's in that space. But in a lot of ways, it reminds me of the early internet," Felten posited.

My feeling is that Internet was immediately useful to most of its users. Cryptocurrencies have been a global phenomenon for close to two decades and still aren't.

> "What bothers me is that Signal makes you have updates every few days or something, and insist you use the latest version. And that means someone with a court order could say, 'Here, slip a bug into a version, ship it out, and make everybody use it,'" he warned.

Not that I disagree, but this is not exactly Signal's fault. If it really matters, one can compile Signal from sources and use that... but then "someone" could pay NSO to hack your phone.

The world has became better since there are internet-based currencies made without any government assistance. Imagine not being able to send money because you don't have phone or passport or good reputation among governments.