I’m a long-time cryptocurrency “enthusiast” you might say, but I’ve been out of those circles since Bitcoin was <$1k. I still buy a bit every pay period but don’t do anything with it other than transfer it to cold storage periodically.

The whole community changed about the time Bitcoin hit $1k. Prior to that there were a lot of idealists around and a handful of “investors”. There were Ponzi schemes, but they were literally labeled “Ponzi schemes”, so no real harm was done. Since then, the proportions have flipped: the vast majority of people are “investors”, there’s a seemingly equal small number of idealists and scammers, and with few exceptions there’s not really anything exciting in the works that I know of.

I miss the old days :(.

FWIW, I still think cryptocurrencies will outlast all existing government-backed fiat currencies. The difference is that I don’t think it’s going to happen on any predictable timeframe.