A cryptocurrency without crypto is just a currency then?

Regardless of whether it’s eroding trust in cryptography today, I still assert it was a reasonable choice when the term was coined. Cryptocurrency depends fundamentally on cryptography.

just because it uses sha256 as it’s proof of work doesn’t make it crypto, as it was essentially picked out of a hat.

You could probably switch proof-of-work to use some non-cryptographic primitive with similar properties (maybe protein folding?) and it would still serve the same purpose, ignoring the economic problems. I will concede that point.

Bitcoin still cannot function without cryptography. Each UTXO is bound to a particular key pair. Each block refers to its parent using a hash. If either of those were switched to a non-cryptographic primitive, there would be no way to authenticate the owner of a UTXO, nor would there be a way to prove the ordering of blocks. Removing cryptography from cryptocurrency would make it entirely useless as a currency.

And for the signing of transactions, are we going to start calling bank checks crypto?

Banks existed for a thousand years without the existence of cryptography. If you removed cryptography from RCS, you’d still have the rest of the standard for messaging.

I hate to be that guy, but Bitcoin uses elliptic curve cryptography to sign transactions, and SHA256 is definitely in the field of cryptography. While cryptocurrency isn’t purely cryptography, it is cryptography plus economics. Borrowing the “crypto” prefix, at least in my opinion, is reasonable.

This is a government office. A government should be able to build the technical knowledge required to keep a private signing key secure.

I do agree that individual-to-individual cryptography is more difficult, but how often do you need to check the authenticity of a document from a friend or acquaintance, digital or otherwise?

Cryptography and PKI makes it pretty feasible to authenticate digital documents.

Absolutely. GOG has a much better license and distribution model, but it’s still a license.

That’s not true. You still only receive a license to play the game, you do not own it. Directly from GOG’s website:

We give you and other GOG users the personal right (known legally as a ‘license’) to use GOG services and to download, access and/or stream (depending on the content) and use GOG content. This license is for your personal use. We can stop or suspend this license in some situations, which are explained later on.

Practically this means you cannot resell your GOG installer in the way you could resell a physical book.

There’s a loud subculture of furries who insist sex is shameful and something to apologize for.

It works okay for a while, but eventually it loses the plot. The storylines are usually pretty generic and washed out.