Comment by FabHK

Indeed. Permissionless blockchain is much less of a technological innovation, but more of a governance innovation, specifically an accountability sink, where instead of a named entity (corporation, institution, person) being in charge, you have this amorphous blob in charge that does come together if its interests are affected (this 184 bn Bitcoin bug, the DAO hack, etc.), but otherwise even in the presence of heinous crimes shrugs and says: "who, me? what can I do?"

I don't understand why that's so attractive to so many participants - possibly because the enormous negative externalities of such a thing more often than not don't fall on themselves, but other, more vulnerable people.

(Not always though: when 200 Bitcoin were stolen from ultra-libertarian Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr, he came crying for help from the bad bad centralized FBI rather quickly...)