I think the biggest problem with crypto is the difficulty to get reliable information about pretty much anything. The vast majority of crypto related "discussion" on twitter or reddit is worthless. You have to dig pretty deep in to various developer communities (node, blockchain analysis, mev bot developers) to find people who actually have at least some basic understanding of smart contract interactions and can better assess the risks of different projects.

I don't share the view that Terra or FTX are good reasons to give up on crypto. Terra's promise of 15-20% interest on staking a "stable coin" should have raised big red flags. Even at the time there were notable people warning of risks in such algorithmic stable coin, but their voices were drown out under the massive hype parade on twitter that then spread on to various news outlets and so the stage was set for regular investors to lose their money.

FTX on the other hand was harder to predict but anybody following the age old mantra "Not your keys, not your coins" was safe from that fiasco.

On a purely technical level I think it is incredible what Ethereum has succeeded to achieve. A decentralized ecosystem with decentralized exchanges, loan systems, staking, and so on. Scams, shitcoins are an unfortunate side-effect but I don't see how a decentralized system could ever avoid those.

I personally use crypto whenever possible and think it is absolutely the easiest and cheapest way to transfer money to anywhere in the world. At its best it can also be a very convenient way to make online purchases.