Techie here. I've known a number of people (also techies) who were working on various ways to establish some kind of e-money. It's a difficult problem, the dream being one of returning 'money' as something not controlled by government or big corporations. (What can I say? We were all raised on Heinlein stories of idyllic libertarian futures.)

Bitcoin emerged. It ticked all the technical boxes. As something to speculate in, it was a success, but as a replacement for any of the government-backed fiat currencies — it was a complete bust. The technology worked, but human nature got in the way. There were even discussion groups centered on running what in the stock market would be considered “pump and dump”, not to mention the corruption possibilities inherent in creating a new ‘coin’. Effectively a hellscape for any new small wannabe investor. The only way it can stay afloat is for more and more of those wannabes to put money in. Can anyone say “Ponzi”? I haven’t decided whether the bitcoin evangelicals are Heinleinian idealists or just looking for innocents to pull into the mill.

I'd agree on Holmes, but that push to come up with something amazing wasn't at all unusual in the tech world. About the only place an engineer could be free of it were engineering-driven (as opposed to marketing-driven) companies, like DEC.

I've never met or interacted with Holmes, but I have dealt with Steve Jobs' "reality distortion field" - which was not significantly different from what she did. The big difference was that she was trying to do it in healthcare, where vaporware can be very damaging to actual people (as opposed to disappointing users that a particular feature isn't yet implemented — and marketers that it isn’t there to sell).

Just my $0.02