[bsanr]

Could be both. I think it's both.

What I don't understand is the vociferousness of the detraction. This community loves Capitalism; crypto is just Capitalism Capitalisming. We've had snake oil salesmen and door-to-door salesmen and contract housing and pyramid schemes and dotcom startups and on and on. People abuse the freedom of the free market; we've always had to cut the "promise" of such markets short with regulation to stop real harm from being done to consumers. That doesn't mean that every possible iteration of such products were useless, or their sale predatory.

Or maybe that's wrong. But that would tend to make most HNers hypocrites, and it's only fair to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.