alt Hacker NewsWell, Cryptocurrencies are part of said new era. They aren't strictly a problem that made things worse: they're a technology that comes with tradeoffs. The cat is out of the bag and we have to design around technologies that are here to stay in whatever capacity. Distributed, cryptography-based currencies/tokens are one of those technologies.
Yes, on the one hand, they enable a lot of shady illegal business, but in the other hand, they also destroy the environment while doing it, so it's really a toss up whether cryptocurrency is good or bad overall!