Crypto (i.e. the group of humans who invest in and develop crypto projects) does NOT have an ethics problem. There are, without a doubt, scumbags, dudebros, and fraudsters in crypto. But there are scumbags, dudebros and fraudsters on wallstreet, in government, in charities, and in education as well as every other working aspect of modern society.

Further it seems you have a poor sense of history. Every single technological advancement attracts these same people because the technology is not well understood by everyone. This goes for modern chemistry (especially after the invention of the Haber Process, and opiate refinement), electricity, petrochemicals (vaseline was once thought of as good for you eat!). The dot-com bubble was full of scam artists. The entire vitamin market is basically an elaborate sham for first world nations as is the “wellness” market.

The bubble (and frankly all bubbles) was the cleansing of these people and scammy projects. ICOs are currently useless and are basically dead, airdrops are pointless. Nothing “needs to die” for decentralization to happen. It will simply happen and these tired mechanisms of get rich quick schemes will be obviated. The only projects continuing are those who are actually creating value, lead members who have integrity. Do gamblers have a gambling problem? Definitely.

Where is the integrity?

I think you will have a far easier time finding it now than you did a year ago. No one wants to lose their money, but the lessons of a bubble apparently need to happen every few years or so to teach newcomers that there is no such thing as a free lunch (no matter what collectivists think).

Every sector in crypto has projects that were smart with their money, were transparent and communicative. And virtually all of those are still standing.

Look at Cardano. It’s a blockchain being developed slowly and with vision, integrity and standards in place. There is no rush to release it if its not right so that it can stand the test of time. EOS is courting an ethical version of basic income. Restart energy is about to launch their crypto based energy exchange platform that makes energy trading assessable to everyone. There are literally hundreds of good news stories in crypto and you wrote a long article about dudebros and complaining that some people got rich.

If you want to really highlight the epitome of integrity in crypto (I assume you didn’t do this because you wanted to attact more readers, I agree, good news doesnt sell), I would focus your attention to The Divi Project. I seriously think their behavior since day one has been exemplary.

• They raised only what they thought they needed during their ICO, a measly 3.3 million dollars at the time of 100M dollar raises and higher (heck EOS raised 4 billion!).
• When, after months of waiting the team found out that their development group basically defrauded them and they couldn’t release their main net, they posted a huge mea culpa and engaged the community about plans going forward.
• After this intense event, the team dove into recovery mode and released a fully functioning main net, completely rewriting all the code, in three months.
• When they did the swap to their mainnet, they had engaged the community about swap ratios. They also engaged the community about ways to deal with the fallout of the failed development contractors.
• Since the swap, with little funding, they have delivered milestone upon milestone with an intense eye on bringing crypto to everyone, solving many of the problems with crypto as a currency.
• They are communicative, transparent, thoughtful about the impact of crypto on society, ecologically concerned, and socially and financially considerate and inclusive.

What is the result? The tribe follows the leaders in this case. The tribe that you have all sorts of bad words for, also consist of helpful, friendly people who share the ethics and morals of the program leads. Divi is certainly not the only project like this, but its a great example of how it can and will work going forward without calls for banning things and the death of various things you personally do not like. You message should simply have been “Are you engaged in a toxic crypto tribe? Leave it, there are way better ones”