I was optimistic about cryptocurrency, but the problem I see is that the bad drives out the good. There are so many scams that the very idea is now linked to scams in the mind of a huge number of people, driving away a ton of people who might otherwise use it for things that are not scams.

It's the "bad neighborhood effect." A few people commit crimes, so a neighborhood becomes known as "bad." The people who don't commit crimes move out. Now most of the neighborhood's residents are criminals.

A lot of financial regulation is about maintaining the reputation of markets so that serious people will use them. If too many scams, bubbles, and other nonsense goes down, the market gets an overall bad reputation.

I think this effect certainly plays a big part in slowing down progress on fundamental research in an otherwise hyper-active field. But the good thing about open technologies is that they can act like neutral tools and not neighborhoods.

Decentralization allows anyone to start their own bubble with however much curation they want. If you want crypto without scams, it's very easy to achieve. Let's not forget how terrible a reputation the whole "world wide web" had just 2 decades ago, and yet here we are complaining how locked-down and ultimately "too safe" it has become.

The space will change with more regard for fundamental aspects of the platforms' technology, than transient feelings about its current ecosystem.