This is great. (Nice post, sir.)
Seriously though, I liked the difference you draw between crypto and fiat enthusiasts, wouldn't have occurred to me. I wonder often about a lot of great writers who disappeared from here. Who seemed to enjoy the community/freedom element as well as the money thing. Just gone. I keep thinking, why? I mean the ones who left...where did they go? What did they find that was better and offered so many things in one place? And how come they didn't pop back to tell the rest of us:))
Personally, I'm not business/money oriented. It s a problem. So while I'll probably have money as one of my options, right now my main attractions are the community (in 7-8 years, you build some pretty strong connections) and the freedom. I write around online a lot and have yet to find a place that's as open and unrestricted (for one) in terms of what you can say, and where there's such a broadness of open-minded people. There's willingness to dialogue which is dying out in many parts of the Internet and that's pretty awesome.
The last one is a good question, right? If there are places that are so much better, where are they?
On average, the conversations are just better here and, there is the ability to speak to the same people across the space of years consistently. I feel I know people pretty well, even though we have never met in person - unlike you, who I have met in person!
Nearly all the other platforms encourage point scoring against other users, not development of personal skills. It becomes a place for voyeurs, not collaborators.