Alright, I admit it, I work in tech, I have been in crypto for 4 years or so, and I genuinely have no idea what crypto is used for other than an investment or money transfer product. You can make apps on it?

Edit to clarify: I like crypto myself, got a punk rock vibe to it. I just don't know what all it gets used for. Also the job in tech is internal tools dev at a medium sized game publisher.

Edit again: Guys the whole point of this post was I don't know shit about what I bought. Regardless of what I think seems like it's worth investing in I'm the LAST person you should be asking for crypto advice. I've gotten multiple DMs. What the fuck lol

Yep. I think about this constantly, I understand the use case for something like Bitcoin. Transfer money with no middle men. I get that.

What the hell are these other chains supposed to be doing? Half my damn portfolio is Ethereum and I genuinely can't tell you what you're supposed to do with it. Why would you develop an app on a Blockchain? Let alone how. Is there some inherent benefit here? God I have no clue.

For the longest time I just thought it was like providing a decentralized version of something like AWS or Azure, like a grass roots server host. Holy shit I was wrong. There's all sorts of shit you can make apparently.

But yeah idk. Feels good to come clean. I got into it cause it seemed like a smart investment and so far so good. But I'm amazed I've not come across any real application of it in my day to day life so far that I'm aware of at least.

I cannot be alone here right? Please. It's wild to me that I understand more about the idea behind what an NFT is (supposed to be) used for than any application of any other blockchains.

Idk if anyone else is in this camp and feels dumb you're not alone. I feel ya.

-------Alright so I went to bed, came back, and this thread exploded. In an attempt to 'Give back' to this community that is actually full of pretty helpful people amongst all the 'people dont know shit about fuck memes' ill share some of what I've learned for anyone taking a glance at this post;

• Right now, currency transfers is the king application. Send money from point A to B without interference or approval from the man, that's a valuable service, and for the most part, thats a very simple summary of the idea of what gives a coin like bitcoin its value. Okay cool, easy starting point out of the way.
• There are actually a few, quite a few, blockchains that offer a more tangible service, now. Storage, processing power, internet browsers, etc. Something you can either open up on your PC and use as a regular application, or something you can plan on using with a development project. I won't name specifics ones because there were a lot mentioned, but right now if you're looking for a 'product' you can use these are where they find their niche. Feels and seems kind of like a natural evolution of peer to peer applications from back in the day, that's the example I'm using to help myself understand it a bit, there's probably a better way.
• Blockchains can trim a lot of the fat off of most recordkeeping and proof of ownership processes, but for the most part, haven't... yet? Most haven't found any real adoption for processes that have some sort of regulation agency behind it. Which makes sense, I'm assuming it's incredibly rare that any department of any government would be likely to agree to dissolve itself due to being obsolete. The question remains with crypto record keeping how do you butt heads against something like that? This one is a broad generalized sense of what I got in the comments, I know there are cases otherwise.
• Apps, Dapps, and a bunch of other terms. So, a lot of people seem to take it as a jab, because it seems like it gets used as a jab, to overly summarize it by saying 'most crypto applications, are applications built on crypto to help you trade crypto?'. But, for the most part, that seems pretty true. For now at least. It seems like the real application of Dapps has yet to be realized. Which I want to clarify, I don't think totally discredits them, nobody could imagine any of the applications of early era internet environments. Just makes it hard to figure out what's going on. (Also I'm just talking majority of cases here. there ARE, some apps that aren't just for moving crypto around more efficiently, but my understanding is still too caveman to have brought them up.)