>Not to mention all of crypto on and off ramps are incredibly centralized

The major ones, yes. That's because most of the decentralized ones got shut down or closed voluntarily out of fear of getting prosecuted on ML charges. LocalBitcoins is a good example, first they got their site blocked in authoritarian countries like Russia. Then they had to restrict service in some US states and other more liberal places as well. Finally they shut down operations completely.

The question is if people still want to fight for such liberties or not. There are multiple countries working on CBDCs and to abolish or at least severely restrict cash payments. In many EU countries this is already reality. For example France has a limit of 1000€ for residents.

Cash is a quasi anonymous form of payment, in self-custody. Throughout history something similar has always existed, be it metal coins or even earlier forms of money. There is a real danger as we're on our way to go fully digital to lose control over this freedom to governments and/or banks.

Crypto however is not anonymous. It’s the opposite: a permanent immutable public record (ledger) of your transactions and holdings. That has always been unappealing for many people

So we're at the "then they laugh at you?" stage of the game it seems?

I guess that happened years ago and we are fully in the "and then they fight you" portion of the timeline.

No, more likely it's the "I've invented the perpetual motion machine" game, and we're at the "No, you didn't, it's snake-oil" stage.

I personally don't think so. I think there are very, very few people actually believing in real-world usage of cryptocurrencies. Most are in it for speculative reasons.

I was really interested in building things for bc really early on but the medium attracted nothing but pump and dump folk. The analogy would be to talk about growing your own food with people running mega farms.