I start caring about crypto (and security) when it gets deployed in the real world, so I can break it. We ship a product, but for the most part, I am myself a professional abuser of software. So there you go, re: homomorphic encryption.

As regards "street cred", look, you can assign whatever credibility you want to the guy. I'm telling you, from the trenches, you are often going to be worse off for basing decisions based on what he says. Sure, you'll say, you don't base decisions off what some random pundit on the Internet says, and I say to you, "good on ya". But lots of people do, and so taking the piss out of him is a noble enterprise in my view.

And I am all about the nobility.