This is the 3rd wave of crypto enthusiasm that I've observed. In the first wave it was exclusively technical people who understood the details of blockchain, an

This is the 3rd wave of crypto enthusiasm that I've observed. In the first wave it was exclusively technical people who understood the details of blockchain, and where fascinated with the tech and perhaps a bit naively enthusiastic about the social component. Then the second wave was technical adjacent people. Most of the "investors" I knew they were less technical people but still in the startup scene. Most of them didn't really understand how cryptocurrencies worked, but weren't completely clueless. They still had to figure out how to create a wallet, acquire coins etc but could only give you a hand wavy understanding of how various currencies actually worked. This current wave was the naive retail wave, where large masses of people who fundamentally do not understand the underlying technology started getting involved. Most of these people in earnest do not understand what a "wallet" is, have no idea how to use crypto currencies outside of a central exchange. All they know is "a lot of people seem to be making easy money off this". This is precisely why so many of the loudest critics in this current wave where crypto enthusiasts in the first wave. It became increasingly clear to anyone with technical understanding of the topic that the only explanation for what we're seeing is a lot of the very financial corruption and scams they were hoping to fight in the first wave.