Who called the blockchain itself a scam? The claims I've seen have been (1) that the whole ecosystem is overrun with scammers and (2) that the blockchain is be

Who called the blockchain itself a scam? The claims I've seen have been (1) that the whole ecosystem is overrun with scammers and (2) that the blockchain is being ill-used (hence the NIST workflow). I'd say (2) still applies here - the "blockchain" here is just a distributed database, which already existed before Bitcoin came around. Bitcoin's innovation - combining Merkle Trees with POW - is irrelevant in a network of trusted partners.