I am starting to think that the right way to think about blockchain and cryptocurrencies and tokens might be the way you’d think about stocks, if stocks had just been invented. Here in 2017, it is uncontroversial to say that the invention of limited-liability joint stock companies utterly changed how humans organized their economic activities, and had huge impacts on economic productivity and on society as a whole. But it is also fair to say that the first few hundred years of stocks were mostly fraud and irrational speculation. Similarly with cryptocurrencies and initial coin offerings, it is possible both that proponents’ grandiose claims about how they will transform finance and society will turn out to be true, and that most crypto stuff in our lifetimes will be nonsense.

— Matt Levine, “Money Stuff”, July 11, 2017