Why is it, therefore, that we have come to see “innovation” as such an unalloyed good, and why is “stifling” it so unequivocally bad? Surely the objective of the innovation — and the possible repercussions — should matter, too. Innovation might be crucial in making progress in all sorts of areas, such as medicine or science, but we seem to have got to a place where it is the idea itself that we venerate. That is wrong-headed: innovation should not be seen as an end in itself, but as a means of making something better.
Crypto might be novel but that does not make it useful or valuable to society. We cannot go on imagining that all innovation is a force for good. In practice, “innovation” often just means exploiting gaps in existing rules until the regulators catch up — so called “regulatory arbitrage”, a strategy that the crypto industry has very successfully deployed and indeed relied upon. Unfortunately for these ingenious crypto “innovators”, catching up is exactly what regulators are now doing.
Source: Crypto shows we shouldn’t venerate ‘innovation’ for its own sake | Financial Times
