GPUs before crypto had a lot less amount of VRAM. Crypto investment funded a lot of stupid experiments, of which some did stick to the wall. I don't think gamers had lives completely ruined by crypto in the end.

Crypto didn't need vram did it? It was just about hash rate no?

Besides, a 1080 had 8GB, a 5080 has 16GB. Double in 10 years isn't ground breaking. The industry put VRAM into industrial chips. It didn't make it to consumer hardware.

What games have had to deal with instead is inference based up-scaling solutions. IE using AI to sharpen a lower rest image in real time. It seems to be the only trick being worked on at the moment.

I can't think of anything useful crypto did.