Silk Road has been gone for a long time. At this point I would guess that 75% of the volume of BTC movement is from speculators. That's probably conservative.
This is a strange attitude to have. The prize was specifically designed to highlight the work of promising young Mathematicians so why is this an issue? It would be like complaining that the Little League World Series is ageist because it doesn't allow older competitors. Besides there is also the Abel Prize which is equally if not more prestigious, is open to any living Mathematician and has a far more substantial monetary prize attached.
This seems better to me than the Nobel Prize where it may take Decades for your work to be recognized and is kind of a nice retirement gift for old academics. The Fields though can forever change your career trajectory when you win it.
Wasn't the whole point of Moneyball that the A's were able to perform far above their level and salary cap based on evaluating players on hard stats and not appearances? Not sure what your point is.
Never said it was. But the implication was that Sports are more meritocratic than Tech. You don't win MVP of your league through Nepotism but you could easily get $20M+ in VC funding that way.