I note the critical matter regarding the industry is actual centralization. Dinosaurs consider actual benefits to them to be results in the legacy financial system: $profits. As $profits are actual centralization of financial resources, it is a goal contrary to decentralization of finance, which is the actual purpose of cryptocurrencies.
$profits are your goal if you are focused on the legacy financial system.
Decentralization is better measured by transactional ability diversification. Every increase in vendors that accept crypto, exchanges that are not subject to jurisdictions, and currencies that are not controlled by financial institutions are profitable decentralization, and these are the metrics that actually benefit cryptocurrency.
Subjecting cryptocurrency to the control of centralized financial mecchanisms is the loss of profit to people seeking financial freedom. Every imposition of regulation, of exchange to fiat, and subjection to corporations, companies, and institutions political and financial, is destruction of decentralization, and simply substituting new fiats for old.
Cryptocurrency presently isn't money at all. It can be exchanged for money, and only by submitting to legacy centralized financial mechanisms. When cryptocurrency can be exchanged for goods and services directly, outside centralized controls, it performs as money. To date, this remains a negligible factor in the industry. Mostly, crypto is just speculative means of gaining fiat, and a feature of evolution of the centralized financial system.
It isn't tokens valued in fiat that measure the success of cryptocurrency. That's a measure of the successful evolution of centralized financial control. It's the ability to transact for goods and services outside centralized financial mechanisms that measures the success of cryptocurrency, and presently that's a faint shadow of decentralized finance possible.
Personally, I await the actual arrival of currency as a feature of the industry. No such decentralized currency is presently available to me, and I don't see any real prospect of it's eventuation. Tokens priced in fiat are priced higher the more they are centralized, and BTC is the least decentralized of all cryptocurrencies.
When I can pay rent, buy food, power, and water without exchanging cryptocurrency for fiat, then crypto will actually be currency. It's just a form of derivative today.