You could have just said "markets" and nothing you've said would have changed. Cryptocurrency isn't magically immune to all of the same problems that other currencies or commodities face.
On the contrary, it's worse in blockchain token markets. Much worse. Out-and-out scams like the Squid Game token exist, and it's unlikely anyone will ever face punishment for that. The DAO hack went unpunished. Hell just look at any major exchange and watch the wash trading
and ladder attacks unfold right in front of your eyes.
edit: I can't prove the laddering, and some markets simply don't offer derivative trading. But I suspect. The wash trading is so obvious though.
Accounting for anything is boring unless you're an economist. Any over-investment in blockchains as a solution to some problem does more to show the idiocy of middle management than anything else. Of course they've been stupidly doing the same long before blockchains were even conceived of so this is hardly new either.
If it saves you a lot of money over traditional solutions and makes it easier to maintain an effective off-site backup of all your invoices, then it can be pretty handy.
Like, some people should get excited about paying porn site workers without banks interfering
There's several projects related to that. PINK was the first one, but there are others.
or sending money to Nigeria for cheap
Tons of work being done in that area. I was surprised how far along some projects have come in pursuit of that goal.
Definitely does not square with the hype, which is "people are getting rich because people are buying it because people are getting rich"
Buy the hype, sell the news, as the saying goes. The blockchain world is full of whitepapers and hot new projects (or tepid old ones with momentuim), but which ones actually show progress? Surprisingly, there are a few, but project valuation is often not related to progress.