Crypto has been the wild west from the start, but before 2017 it was largely the good kind of wild West.

The thing is, it was never in the interest of states and central banks that crypto succeed or frankly even exist. It is a competitor to their captured manipulable systems that they can't control when implemented properly. So what did they do?

Tell me you haven't seen this pattern before: They slowly introduce a retarded narrative regarding a particular state, and vigorously finance and support the adherents of this narrative over time. Anybody who objects to or points out the flaws with the narrative is progressively attacked more viciously until they are censored entirely and unpersoned as much as possible. Once all the spaces of discussion rgarding the subject are dutifuly parroting the party line, they execute policy changes in line with their controlled narrative and claim it is business as usual, nothing to see here, this was always the plan and entirely inevitable and a good thing.

This is exactly what happened to bitcoin in 2017. It was permanently restricted in decentralised format to seven transactions per second worldwide, and any future transaction growth forced into the lightning network, which is not at all decentralised and was architected to emulate the central correspondent banking network.