Even the two articles that the essay cites from the NYT and New York Post, once you get past the headlines, go on at length about how these things were risky an

Even the two articles that the essay cites from the NYT and New York Post, once you get past the headlines, go on at length about how these things were risky and volatile, or even downright scams. Almost every article about cryptocurrency in these traditional venues tends to have at least one paragraph where they will describe cryptocurrency skepticism. Now it could be that people started to treat these as a kind of pro forma disclaimer, like the small text about "past results are not guarantees of future returns" that you see with traditional investments. But the warning was there.