There were no "old days".
0.0000001 femtoseconds after the bitcoin white paper dropped describing it, in the first sentence, as a peer-to-peer digital cash replacement the cryptobros descended-- hyping up the "smash the banksters" and "reject the fed" narrative in order to bilk gullible people out of their actual cash.
While muttering "arrrrrbitraaaaaaaaaaaaaage" in their sleep, they dreamed of setting up exchanges hoping to out-bankster the banksters at their own game.
With a dictionary in their left hand and and a YouTube playlist of investing videos in their right they quickly learned to frame crypto not as a "digital cash" but as a security, an investment, a lifestyle, a social statement, a religion. A crusade.
But it has always been, and will always be, a tool for allowing first-movers to scam the information-poor.
And I'm saying this as someone who received actual, entire, bitcoins from faucets and mined actual, entire bitcoins on my Radeon HD 6970.