Has crypto sentiment shifted?

When I first heard about Bitcoin, it was a novel idea - decentralized money, immutability, and self custody. What a novel thought! You mean I don’t have to keep my money in the bank?

This is not long after the 2008 financial crisis, around the time of Occupy Wall Street, when it was starting to become clear that the folks holding our funds might not have everyone’s best interest at heart. The “tinfoil hat” crowd was coming out of the woodwork with their “I told you so!”s, and young adults were camping out in front of some of the world’s largest financial institutions trying to figure out what the heck was going to happen with THEIR money whenever they had any to lose.

Then 2011 came around and some folks starting getting lambo money, and I wonder if this was the beginning of the sentiment shifting around crypto?

All of a sudden, it seemed like folks were entering the market with a speculator’s mindset, as opposed to the viewpoint that drove the BTC creator(s).

The decade since has seen insane run ups and crashes, institutional and government investments, and the MSM even giving advice like it’s Opposite Day.

But I question whether the narrative is now focused more on cryptocurrencies as an investment opportunity rather than as a means for the common man to have financial freedom, custody their own assets, and have control over their worth.

The latter seems like a dangerous sentiment for the public to have, in the eyes of legacy financial institutions, and I’m really curious to see how this all plays out.