The harshest critics and strident boosters of crypto-land are engaged in an ever-escalating contest to see who can project the most lurid vision of the future. Nothing in this arena can be taken at face value, which makes it unusually fertile ground for battle-testing your own critical thinking skills.

My adventures down the rabbithole have given me a lot of ideas for blog posts, but experience suggests I won’t get round to publishing most of them.

Instead, I want to call my shots right now: