I disagree here. The 'killer app' feature of crypto is that it's basically imperfect banking without KYC/AML. Without crypto's popularity it's doubtful Do Kwon and Luna would have gotten such a foothold.

Excellent point.

The legislature ripped quite a bit of privacy and freedom from the banking system post 9/11 on an almost blind rampage, without doing much stopping and asking why things were they were. I admit it was the ultimate Chesterton's fence fail on the government's part and likely a big reason why a new fence seems to have been built with crypto.

Honestly even bitcoin the white paper seems to have had more thought poured into it than the Patriot Act, which kicked off much of the KYC reforms in the US. In reality I think many of the adopters of cryptocurrency realized exactly the dystopia that the banking system was going down and very deliberately tried to take some of the failures of government into account.