One of the things that has been most progressive in tech over the last 30 years was the depression style crash in the Nasdaq starting in 2000 and lasting 10 years.
There are a lot of good documentaries on the dotcom bubble. Here's one I thought was particularly interesting since it mentions a lot of the superstar names at the time that no-one has ever heard of now. It gives some insight into how the companies were being run and how unproductively capital allocation to tech start-ups and development of the industry was.
The solid crash and then following crush/stagnation in the Nasdaq obliterated this frivolously capital allocation. he attitude of buying the dip faded as the market continued to zigzag down over many years. Speculation in tech dropped substantially. The number of IPOs went down drastically. Over the next 5 - 10 years the good companies would build real profitable models and a fundamentally sound bull market began (Then it all got a bit bubbly again recently, if you ask me).
The tech industry improved because companies that really wanted to work in the tech were left. The ones putting a ".com" on their name just to blag investors were making up a high percentage of the market in 1999. By removing the speculative rewards of the industry quickly the industry was striped down to the fundamentally sound ones. Who were further encouraged to build profitable companies rather that making trades with their stock.
The parallels with crypto here are obvious. In 1999 people would buy a stock just because it had ".com" in the name. Today people will buy a crypto (Whatever) just because it's a crypto thing. There was a post in r/cc where someone explained how they made a scam currency that was totally worthless. As a warning. The next day they posted showing the spike in price. Readers bought it.
In the linked Dotcom docu, investors are asked if they know what the company they've invested in does. And most of them have no idea. "They work in the internet". It seems silly to have no concept of how the internet could be used to conduct business today - but in 1999, almost no-one had any concept at all of what the internet actually was. Never mind what you did on it.
The current state of crypto is obviously the same. A lot of people who own Bitcoin do not know what it is. As we span out into the other coins of varying market cap there'll be a lot more who do not know (Or even care) what it is they've bought. Why they'd buy it over other offerings. An extremely high percentage of the time if you ask someone why they own crypto assets they'll tell you because it is going to go up.
Today having a strong knowledge about the crypto market and being able to pick out a good offer from a bad offer is not an advantage. Hype, momentum and marketing are more applicable drivers than adoption, user cases, fees, speed, reliability and practicality for mass application/adoption. It's probably fair to say being well informed about what makes a solid project with long-term prospects negatively predicts success investing in crypto now relative to those who know less than you over the last year or two (With the exceptions of those who've been caught up in sustained bears, such as doge. Doge was massively beating most others before this).
If crypto is the future that does not mean it is immune to a sustained bear market. It means it'd be able to survive it. That after the flush-out there'd be a more focused effort on showing real benefits of different crypto based projects. All steak and no sizzle. Like the internet of the early 2000s, users and utility would start to grow. Growing through gaining a benefit of thing in question. People who do not know the ticker symbol, you know what I mean?
Although it would be very painful for investors, a sustained multi-year bear market would not necessary be bad for the overall development of the industry.
The example of the Nasdaq and how that all went on to develop I think is a very good perspective to have in mind when it comes to crypto risk/opportunity. Risk of some things collapsing and not recovering is real. Buying hot tickers is good while it's hot. In 1999 a lot of people heard of AMZN. By 2010 few people had heard of AMZN, but lots of people knew about Amazon.com.
True adoption of the internet came during a time when speculation in the internet stocks was very unpopular.
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