I first learned about blockchain years ago talking to some middle eastern clients who had implemented something with it. After looking at the technology from a data & software engineering pov, I thought it was basically useless and incredibly niche. I said as much, but they didnt believe me; they also thought ML was where you "fed data to a machine and it did everything" because that's what some lecturer had told the…
It is important to note, that even if from looking from far outside, finance looks like one thing, in reality there is a big divide within finance regarding how "value" is defined. On the other hand, there is a simple notion that value of a thing is whatever someone is willing to pay for it. And on the other hand, there is a bit more complex idea that if you somehow know the value of a cash flow, then if you are able to create the same cashflow in some other way, then the other cash flow must have same value.
The first one is the home of powerpoints, VC capital and crypto. (It's also easy to recognize these professional financiers once you start to discuss whether sweat equity should be valued similarly to cash equity. They are completely appalled with the idea, because reasons.)
The second is home of financial regulation, really fancy maths and modern banking risk management.
The failure modes are different here. The first one, typical failure model is scam. The second, well, you can google LTCM for that.
And what comes to crypto, there is a clear and obvious difference. The first ones see no reason why not investing into crypto, after all, someone is paying 60k for a BTC, its value is thus 60k, what more do you want? The second ones scratch their heads. They see no positive net cash flows anywhere, thus the value must be negative. And this is the reason (in addition to regulation) why banks and professional bankers for the most part keep clear from crypto and struggle seeing value, while VC money is/was pouring in.