I wasted years of my life in crypto

I've never understood the initial arguments about Bitcoin, no matter how many times they've been explained to me.

The block chain is, and always was, an extremely inconvenient database. How anyone, especially many intelligent people, thought it was realistic to graft a currency on top of such a unwieldy piece of technology is beyond me. Maybe it goes to show how few people understand economics and anthropology and how dunning-krueger can happen to anyone.

Now the uninformed gambling on futuristic sounding hokum? THAT is easy to understand.

That being said, I'm sorry the author had to go through this experience, the road of life is often filled with unexpected twists and turns.

It's an ingenious solution to achieve a "trustless" currency that prevents double-spending without a central authority. Unfortunately, this solves the wrong problem. Spending money usually involves getting a good or service in return, which inherently requires "trust" (as does any human interaction). Your fancy blockchain is not going to help you if you order something with Bitcoin and no package arrives.

I always thought it was actually an ingenious solution to elections. There's absolutely no reason that a driver's license can't derive a hash that can only be proven and not reversed (for identity); and provides a one-time contribution to a blockchain that contains your vote - which you then receive your block's information when you finish voting.

ANYONE can calculate the sums, anyone can verify and proof hashes, identity is kept secret, trust is installed with hash checks for each and every voter - etc etc etc.

It's certainly more airtight than the solution we have today - where trust and efficiency can both be compromised fairly easy.

You're describing a transparency log, which doesn't require a blockchain.

A transparency log, as I understand them, requires a centralized actor; which makes it easier to fudge numbers and introduce false participants.

No, because each participant can check its contribution in the log.

Everybody gets a copy of a verifiable hash etc when voting, allowing voters to mathematically check their vote.

The kind of knowledge allowing to design such clever algorithms is the real meaning of the word "crypto" (cryptography).