I personally view crypto and the crypto boom as an experiment in unfettered capitalism - it’s still a new technology, the governments haven’t caught up to it yet so no regulations, yet quite literally 99% of crypto usage was in trying to take advantage of others (scams) and speculation.
The only thing with actual value that came out of crypto was probably Monero, which allowed for completely anonymous payments, something that crypto, when paired with crypto exchanges, is bad at.