The issue at “The Art of Blockchains” was less malice than myopia. People with careers in art or careers in tech tend only to see what they’ve been trained to see. But regardless of the difference in animating force, the results at the conference were the same as in Giridharadas’s formulation: As ever, the people offering the most disruptive and transformative ideas about blockchain’s potential were almost invariably the ones with the least power to implement them.