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> You are comparing crypto to a service that a third party provides on top of fiat. It's not a fair comparison as there is nothing stopping third parties providing the same service on top of crypto (and the third party does not necessary need human intervention to function when both parties act in good faith).

You're missing the point: the GGP said "cryptocurrencies solve the issue of trust" but they clearly haven't in any practical sense.

It also a fair comparison, because I don't share the ideological obsessions that motivate cryptocurrency, nor have I made a speculative bet on it where I feel the compulsion to shill for it to save my own skin. As a practical matter, cryptocurrency is stupid and compares poorly to non-cryptocurrency alternatives in nearly all use caseses. It may make sense in some unusual ridiculously contrived use case, but that proves my point.

> Keeping track of balances is a tough problem that did not (and still doesn't) have a good solution for after many decades of operation.

That's not true: it has a sufficiently good solution that nearly the entire economy runs off of it. Meanwhile, the supposed "better" solutions are less scalable and use more electricity than Argentina to perform operations that a typical desktop PC is powerful enough to do.