> You can have schadenfreude at Bernie Madoff getting caught and still sympathize and/or empathize with his many, many victims.

Exactly. Madoff's crimes were despicable because of the way that they hurt individuals and families. The situation with crypto is potentially quite a lot worse than that was. And not just because of the overall scale.

Many individual retailer investors will never recover. This has the potential to do a great deal of damage to the fabric of society.