First, I agree with you. Dealing in nearly all crypto-currencies is financially irresponsible whether it's your own money or other people's.

That said, perhaps Hanes would have been duped by an similar non-crypto scam. It seems that all he needed was some online contacts and a fake web page with numbers on it.

Ultimately, it wasn't the crypto that was the problem. The problem was that he stole other people's money. He didn't mismanage it; he stole it.

But if it wasn't crypto, it's much more likely they would have been able to track down and prosecute the scammers, and claw the money back.