As a point of comparison, look at https://fundthatflip.com/ (real estate lending) and then compare them to most of the crypto platforms. It's not the crypto that is the problem, it is the populist "robinhood" rhetoric that gets crypto into trouble. https://fundthatflip.com/ only works with investors who meet the SEC definition of an accredited investor (something like $2 million in assets not counting the value of one's primary residence). In the whole of the USA, there are only 80,000 accredited investors. The SEC is fine with those people taking on risky investments.

If the crypto companies focused their efforts on accredited investors there would be less of a panic about crypto. But most of them come in with a populist rhetoric that sounds like a political movement: they want to bring high growth, high risk investing to the masses, they want to offer something highly speculative to the average person. In other words, they want to try to make an end run around the thousands of laws that we have in place to make sure that the average citizen doesn't get bilked in some scam.

It's the pseudo-political element that is getting crypto into trouble. If they simply said "This is highly speculative and only accredited investors should look at this opportunity" then the crypto companies would be on safer legal ground. But it would be difficult to pump up the price of these cryptocurrencies if the bulk of crypto enthusiasts were taking such a moderate line.