This is a similar issue that I had as well. I thought for the longest time that there is no way "they" would let crypto succeed. I also thought that it was a bubble, but after the 2017 crash and rise, that excuse was pretty much eliminated since true bubbles, like the tulips, don't come back.
In order to believe in crypto, you have to be either young and dumb enough that you don't understand how the the world works, which is why I think many kids get it and "invested" so early, or somehow have the right combination of foresight and risk taking.
We see time and time again that you can't ever fight the big guys. Central banks always win, insiders always win, hedge funds vs. the retail trader, the list goes on. People who have been around long enough have learned to spot out scams and this is a very good tool to have. Crypto will literally be that one thing that bucks the trend in the financial arena. To believe in crypto is a much bigger hurdle to overcome than lets say thinking that Amazon will overtake retail, or that Tesla with years of cash burn and stiff competition will get to where it got.
I honestly don't blame anyone for not seeing it. In fact, if our brains were wired in such a way to be more open to new things when we fully understand how the traditional system works, I think the world would be filled with many more casualties. Our brain's job is after all to keep us safe, and phrases such as "don't fight the Fed", or "stop looking for tops" are true over 95% of the time.
Honestly, these same kids who might be making a killing on crypto are simply lucky to have been born when they were. They have the huge advantage of a reckless FED that is bent on destroying fiat. When else have we had that in the history of the FED? Also, look at the power on meme stocks. Even the hedge funds were taken for a ride because they underestimated the power of the co-ordination of thousands of traders. This would not have been possible just a few years ago. This also would not have been possible if the world wasn't shut down and people had stimulus checks to spend. So I think any rational person has to realize that crypto snuck in the door at just the right time when all the planets were aligned.
These kids are literally playing a game before they even realized the real value of money. Right now you still have thousands of young women on IG showing off their tits and ass and thinking that this is somehow a real job. They think that "influencer" is a worthwhile endeavor, and they think that they can somehow parlay this into meaningful work that will last a lifetime. They probably also think that people really care about what they have to say, when the truth of the matter is that everyone is only paying attention because they are showing skin. In just a few short years, I'm sure they will get a rude awaking when they learn their "sexuality" is now worthless and no longer "saleable" at any price since its been replaced with AI that is incredibly cheap to produce and so realistic. Heck, given how much makeup these girls wear, I'm surprised some of them aren't androids already. I sure as hell can't tell what's real anything. Maybe its lots of makeup... maybe its lots of retouching... or maybe the whole thing is just CGI.
Moving on tough, I also think that before the path for world wide crypto adoption is clear, many coins will have died, some chains may in a fraction of a second break and lose all value in that instant, and that most NFTs will go to zero. (lots of experts in this field say exactly this). And sadly, when the crypto adoption becomes more and more necessary, it will also means the traditional system has more and more cracks, and this will be incredibly painful for many in the world. So as I've said before, the transition will in many ways not be something to celebrate. The acorn in the soil after all only gets a chance to grow when the forest around it has burned down.
So in many ways, I think everything is still up in the air. But the one thing that is sad to have missed was the asymmetric trading opportunity of cryptos. Even for the people who don't believe in it long term, any trader will tell you that a bet where a 100x is possible even just 5% of the time is a trade you should put on every time. Looking at these coins go from 2 cents to 5 cents, and then 5 cents to 10 cents, maybe then 10 to 20, and of course multiple dollar quickly thereafter, its now painfully clear that holding something solid like Amazon or Google or Tesla and hoping for a 50% or 100% gain would have just been a waste of time in comparison. The typical 10% per year seems like not even worth the effort. When GME was doing its thing at the beginning of the year and doubling or tripling like a penny stock, this too was almost child's play when you consider what crypto was doing.
So trading crypto, with the huge asymmetrical advantage of thousands of percent gains in only months that took traditional companies years to manage is something that maybe an experienced trader could have seen. But mass crypto adoption when the world was always tightly controlled is I think much harder for most people to see.
