The difference is that there is, and intentionally so, little legibility to how crypto "does" anything. Increasingly so as you go down the rabbit hole into less prominent projects that are untethered to traditional finance or venture capital. And if we're seeing like a state, that makes it a useless technology, ties it only to crime and the underground, because it can't be seen and controlled using men with guns or tattling gossips. And from a counter-cultural perspective, that should make one go, "hmm, that's interesting." Someone who is able to access state resources while being insulated fron state coercion could be seen as "useless parasite" or "bold counter-culturalist".
Right now it is highly inconvenient to adhere to a "crypto lifestyle", even more so than it was to be a hippie. As you say, buying drugs with it is a common entry point, and it's hard to use a crypto wallet for any kind of consumer activity. And everywhere you go, the discussion is unhinged speculation with an "exit strategy". The actual believers are quite a bit fewer in number, and are more likely to be along the lines of a Vitalik than an SBF - living relatively simply and focused primarily on intellectual concerns, vs a grand-scale dishonest charlatan.
And protest movements, while visually impactful, don't seem to terrify the mainstream like crypto. In many respects they have become co-opted, part of the show.
