One potential counterargument to this is scale. Before 2012, I hadn't heard of Bitcoin. Back in '13, it was me and a couple of my nerd friends who were talking

One potential counterargument to this is scale. Before 2012, I hadn't heard of Bitcoin. Back in '13, it was me and a couple of my nerd friends who were talking about this crazy Bitcoin surge. I read some about the algorithm, thought it was cool, and left my money elsewhere. It was mostly low-traffic articles or niche sites that talked about it. A year ago, my dad asked me about it. My coworkers claimed to be experts on it, but only had the most basic understanding of Merkle trees, and no real context on mining difficulty adjustment. Each successive bubble has involved more and more people who are new to Bitcoin. At some point everyone who cares about the "get rich quick" aspect will have already heard and gotten burned.