Ever since MtGox, a familiar headline, reusable every year or so, with only the specific identity of the biggest crypto firm needing be changed. (Though, who's next? Not that many still standing, really.)
Sure, the code base may be gate-kept by a small clique of developers, sure, the mining may be largely done by a handful of coordinating mining pools, sure, you may need specialized hardware only manufactured by a couple of shady foundries, sure, all of the money may enter and exit through one or two exchanges pretending to comply with various money-laundering laws.
But the scam, the scam is beautifully decentralized.
In a normal scam, there's one or two people at the top who will eventually cut and run or go to jail, and the entire pyramid collapses beneath them.
Bitcoin? There's no one at the top. Anyone can just jump in and start scamming, and they'll grow and grow until they maybe reach the top and implode, and then without missing a beat a new group of scammers will be ready to take over even as the last undergoes a very public trial or a very quiet disappearance.
Behold, the power of decentralization.