Don't forget that Ethereum is still a research project. "Denial" and "covering-up" would only apply if the devs were still promising that the base-layer would scale by itself. But ask any serious developer and it is pretty understood that "(Complete) Decentralization, Security, Scalability... pick two" is how things will have to go.
Many years and thousands of faulty Solidity contracts later, I still haven't been entirely vindicated. I certainly missed the boat on the gains, though I still did OK overall with my other moves. As it turns out, both the type of dev and the type of investor Eth attracts have never really changed: both are a bit too awed by the raw tech and its generality to think through the application in more detail than "we can make it and you can buy it".
But hey, it worked, the party is now crowded with apes; it's probably time to exit, though, cause I can't see it staying like this forever.
+maximalists