[immibis]

> Why would I want to "program" money? What does that actually do for me?

If you are outside of the financial industry, you probably don't. Maybe you can do some amateur high-frequency trading on the side. It's not "programmable money" in the sense of "please send $30 to the gas company every month".

As I see it, the main application is financial derivative products i.e. investment products. You can make any kind of "ownable thing" based upon other ownable things on the blockchain. Remember the mortgage-backed securities that caused the 2008 crash? Now anyone can create their own variety with some coding effort and a $100 fee. And if you pay another $100 fee, they will automatically become tradeable on major exchanges.

It's peak capitalism, basically. From a purely technological point of view, I think this is pretty damn cool. From an economic point of view, it's going to be our downfall.