[banannaise]

When there's a gold rush, the only ones really profiting are the ones selling shovels.

Who won in the whole arms race? Hardware manufacturers, and people who could either run arbitrage or steal resources. (Which is which was often a matter of perspective.) Everyone else? Break-even or worse.

What was actually built, for all that effort? Almost nothing. What did we gain as a society? The same.

And I'm not sure that dollar-denominated financial markets are really any different.