I think the alarm bells were in the alts, not Bitcoin itself. The crypto community used to use alts as a way of testing out new transaction processing concepts

I think the alarm bells were in the alts, not Bitcoin itself. The crypto community used to use alts as a way of testing out new transaction processing concepts (Proof of Stake, new mining algorithms to stop ASIC abuse, etc). Now, we seem to be testing out these new techniques on Bitcoin itself through the various forks that have occurred in recent months.