I agree that there are many ill-informed people are buying into scams in "crypto" because they think they're "getting in early on the next bitcoin".
e.g. I have a close friend who is quite non-technical who is taking a naive approach by putting a significant portion of his funds into a "cryptocurrency" (not even a utility token) with a very cultish following and pyramid/ponzi scheme mechanics. I've looked into it, and the only buzz seems to be coming from the project core team patting themselves on the back with paid PR releases that overstate their "significant partnerships", bots, and people who want to retire off its "holder incentives". There is notably no buzz from actual developers or similarly credible people.
While I think it makes sense to try to protect people like that from making big mistakes and likely losing significant portions of their net worth, I worry that heavy-handed regulation of the space could block the natural emergence of new use cases and projects that could have very worthwhile public benefits. Or worse, could make people who still believe in the potential of things like web3 and defi– and choose to continue working on projects that violate new and likely unfit regulations –"criminals".
We should be wary of discouraging talented people with good intentions from contributing to the exploration and development of projects around web3 and defi (which depends on exploring different types of application and governance tokens, since these are what allow a decentralized project to economically incentivize its participants to act in a way that serves the project, and in a coordinated manner).
I think at the pace that talented developers are flocking to web3, we should start to see applications with mainstream appeal that provide viable, decentralized but well-coordinated, disintermediated alternatives to applications that have overpowered gatekeeper problems, e.g. those in social media, ecommerce, and many other spaces.