Earlier quoted context omitted.
The thing to remember about Bitcoin, et al, is that it's decentralized. 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 mon…
Stop equating crypto with Bitcoin. This is one of the worst straw-men used by dishonest people.
Fair warning I am one of the people who thinks it's all the same. Even though I have a lot of experience in the space when you zoom out a tiny bit for the average person it starts to look a lot like us arguing vi vs emacs - religion and meaningless and esoteric distinctions to the 99.999%.