Convince me I'm wrong,There's even less adoption and use of crypto today than 6 years ago, we've taken a step backwards

Crypto has reverted and gone backwards since say 2017. Let me plead my case and let me know whether or not you agree with me. And before someone is like but, but but we have NFTs now and Defi, sure Defi is great, NFTs in their current state I think most of us can agree are trash and in reality we had NFTs way back in 2017 with Crypto Kitties, although back then we didn't call them NFT's.

If you're someone who was around this sub, or at least involved in crypto you may understand this. So first off back in 2016/2017 there was more a sense of community. People tipped each other coins, people helped noobs get started, while we all wanted to make money it seems like most people actually had an interest in the technology and moving the space forward. Everyone was a crypto evangelist, at some points even being annoying but people tried to bring others on board, helped others get started. There was less KYC back in 2017 I believe for a period Binance had no KYC and no withdrawl limits, when they did put on withdrawl limits it was like 2 BTC per day with no KYC so pretty sweet. There was constant news about the space moving forward and adoption and in terms of use people were excited about crypto and actually using Bitcoin and crypto to buy things. Sure some of it was the novelty of doing so but I bought some winter hats and would try to buy stuff, spend my bitcoin and support companies accepting Bitcoin and it seemed many others did as well. Anytime something goes mainstream and gains more adoption sure it gets watered down a bit, its just what happens but I would venture to bet probably under 20% of people who got in since 2020 have ever made a Bitcoin purchase and I'd guess probably less than half have even sent crypto off an exchange. Even darknet markets which were a use case some people dont like to focus on but it was a huge use case and proof crypto had value and a purpose, not just buying drugs but really any high risk industry for merchant processing or any industry prone to be affected by censorship. Remember when Patreon was shutting people down and then blaming Visa and Mastercard, yeah with crypto there's no central authority to say this person can't receive money because they have the wrong views.

Today it seems like the vast majority of people are speculating, nobody is really using the technology, a lot of the quasi social media post and earn platforms have gone downhill ie Steemit, DTube and others. A lot of the community aspect is gone, I remember back in 2017 there were tons of meetup groups and community things surrounding crypto, you can still find that today if you look hard enough but its not like it was back then.

I think adoption is going to look much different in reality than what we thought it would look like a few years back but none the less I feel like we've taken a step backwards from where we were in say 2017 or even earler. Your thoughts?