Ive been saying this for a while. Cryptocurrencies are an index tracker for the underground economy.

They're not without value and theyre not all speculation but what value they do have is almost entirely about facilitating transactions which at least one state considers illegal.

I used to think that this would mean that they'd be outright banned eventually but it seems that the "index tracker for the underground economy" proved to be too profitable an investment for western oligarchs and the chance to undermine rival countries' capital controls proved too alluring for the imperialists in government.

I call them ransom futures. But given how many of the ransom situations that are started with "give us N amount of crypto X!" I suspect being resolved entirely in conventional money, through some subcontractor chain of decreasingly white-hattish "security consultancies" that somehow make the problem go away (by knowing someone who will make the problem go away for money), your take is probably the more accurate one.