Serious question: *Why* should crypto development be based on financial utopia if it isn't a necessary driver to technical success nor consumer adoption?

The best entity for pragmatically increasing crypto usage worldwide is likely an analog to the best entity for increasing fiat currency usage worldwide, namely a bank or a bank-like entity. Banks as they exist today contain many undesirable features such as [insert your favourite here], which crypto is a good candidate to solve.

Yet, new generation digital banks that exist in certain markets do solve a significant portion of these issues and haven't so far necessarily required crypto to do so. For example, not having physical branches is a big advantage but one that is a business model concern, not a technical programming issue. Similarly, many of the other advantages also have to do with better management and organizational dynamics and economics, something again outside the scope of computer science.

As a demonstration, consider generically the concept of customer service. I guarantee that you can list off the top of your head significantly more subjective aspects that would improve your experience with a contact center agent than you can list specific problems with IVR software. You wouldn't say that merely having a better coded database is a solution to lower morale or uncompetitive wages, right?

By the same token, why should crypto be treated as the be-all and end-all magic bullet for the system we have today? Do DeFi supporters genuinely believe the problem is as simple as making anything and everything decentralized and splashing some fairy dust on top? How did we arrive at the conclusion that the prime objective is to replace inefficiencies with algorithms, law enforcement with smart contracts, and money with tokens when it's not the technology that's the real problem, people themselves are?