Bitcoin, too, in its early days, had a hand in being associated with all sorts of shady dealings and fraud.
True, in the initial stages there were a lot of pump and dump and scams happening in the name of bitcoin.
Then, when regulation began to come into the industry, these associations were greatly reduced, but altcoins have intensified this effect over time.
Which regulations in this case?
Many exchanges began to introduce KYC, also more than 100 countries created tax and regulatory rules for bitcoin, many banks integrated with bitcoin and began to offer it to clients. That is, bitcoin became more transparent and began to gradually come out of the shadows, and the wave of scams moved to altcoins and various DeFi.
The paradox is that cryptocurrencies imply anonymity and decentralization, but where this very anonymity and decentralization is present, that is where fraud happens, if we talk about altcoins. You need a very fine balance between anonymity and trust in cryptocurrencies, and you can't do that with altcoins.
Anonymity leads to scams if not regulated or verified. That is why it is both an advantage and a disadvantage. People cant trust crypto because of this and the number of scams that run with the help of that and the internet continue at a constant rate.
Not a major number of regulations have been done yet, it would be worth seeing some happen in future too.
Even some developers of decentralized protocols are already thinking that this industry urgently needs regulation, otherwise there will be no further development, adopting a slowdown.