Every one of the big tech companies have large Rust projects. Even Apple has open job listings for Rust devs.

I agree that crypto indeed started out as a dumb, speculative, monetary technology, but it is currently moving toward smart-contract, non-speculative applications, such as guaranteed voting or transfer-of-ownership systems. Crypto indeed started out as a nonsensically power-hungry technology (via Proof-of-Work), but it is currently moving toward power-friendly infrastructure (via Proof-of-Stake). I think the crypto sector will slowly become more and more interesting, employment-wise. For example, how about writing a single contract that is understandable not only by a machine, but also, at the same time, by a judge in a court of law?

Development is development.

Video games are not "serious", yet any C++ developer getting their chops in video game programming is not shunned for it.