This might continue even after pump and dump, but will no longer be lucrative.
(edit: see also "nerd sniping")
There is similarly no shortage of “architecture astronauts,” and whether the greed fuels the use of the wrong tool or vice versa — it probably doesn’t matter in the end.
Say it one more time for the people in the back!
A lot of us are still refining/discussing the same core concepts, cryptography, distributed systems, disbursement, consensus, just in different fields without the 'coin' component attached. A lot of this tech in crypto was nothing new (blockchain, proof of work, hashing, distributed databases), but the combination of them presented new and interesting hurdles to overcome. As time passed we saw new utility for these concepts to solve other interesting problems, but the entire time being a researcher in the cryptoasset space has felt like trying to be a 'serious engineer' while your cubicle is located in a casino floor. You can't make a commit or push a draft paper without it being a market-moving action, that is a social element that a lot of industry theory just doesn't have nailed down yet, and as engineers can be very stressful. Most of us just want to solve problems and build cool things, but its hard to create novel solutions at financial gunpoint.
Really? Sure, reading the whitepapers and playing with something new for a while has been fun, but "true engineers" will realize pretty soon that there's always a better tool for every. single. usecase.