This meme really needs to die. It's driving me more and more insane every time I read it. Ransomware may have existed previously but it was nowhere nearly as prevalent before cryptocurrencies came around. It is not a mere coincidence of the cosmos that almost every single darn time (I think literally 98% of the time, as of 2019) ransomware infects someone's machine, it demands payment in Bitcoin. There is a clear relationship there for a very good reason. I cannot fathom how otherwise logical people can see these with their own eyes and yet somehow blind themselves to the obvious connection.
And if you need this from an authoritative mouth because it isn't already clear as daylight... "Cryptocurrency is one of the single enabling factors that allows cybercriminals to deploy a massive amount of ransomware across state and local agencies", said Christopher Krebs. [1]
[1] https://www.rsaconference.com/library/blog/how-cryptocurrenc...