Oh, absolutely they are. This is not to be construed as any sort of ringing endorsement of the banking system - I just don't think that rebuilding digital Beanie Babies from first principles and wasted electricity is a good solution to the problem.

And surely, nobody in the basically unregulated cryptocurrency world has ever done that, right? Bad actors are bad actors, and it’s disingenuous to point at some and ignore others.

One of the largest cryptobank (exchange) is ran by someone who openly praised one of the major ponzi scams, even after it shut down and was known to be a scam. [1]

Said cryptobank is now allegedly using fake orders to buy up significant amounts of BTC (recently a 50,000 BTC order [2]) during market crashes.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6xpddt/as_20m_more_tet...

[2] https://twitter.com/Bitfinexed/status/908718464671641602

Sure but it's also naive to think that exchanges, the bitcoin central bank of tethers, blockstream, market manipulators, dev teams with premined supplies, and early adopters who spent $100 to own 26% of total supply aren't trying to fuck you over.

No, no, no, you misunderstand. That’s the free market regulating itself! Working as intended. Big difference from what those evil banks are doing in a regulated, capitalist economy which incentivizes them to do exactly what they’re doing in order to prop up a global economic system that enables many people to buy computers, become engineers, and build cryptocurrencies instead of jogging through the savannah with a spear looking for dinner. Cryptocurrency is pure.

Remember, it’s not money laundering, it’s tumbling. Big difference. It’s not wealth inequality, it’s early adoption. Big, big difference. Entirely different concepts.

It's also naive to think they won't continue to do so simply by adding a new asset class into the mix.