Four of my podcast guests are in, or have been to, prison for operating crypto businesses.
I know Ross Ulbricht's mom. He was in prison almost the entire time I was in crypto.
Friends and acquaintances have had their life's work destroyed by the SEC. Dash suffered a lot of bad market action because the SEC named it in now-dismissed lawsuits against Coinbase, Kraken, etc.
Several crypto entrepreneurs either left the space, or the US. People were scared of using privacy tools because of the Tornado Cash case. I feared for my own safety and freedom at one point.
Since November, almost all of this has gone away.
Yes, there's still people in prison or fighting cases right now (Roger Ver, Alexey Pertsev, Roman Storm, Ian Freeman, and more).
But things are night and day different, overwhelmingly better, since the change in US administration. People see market dumps and forget just how bad it was for crypto builders just a few short months ago.