the ftx debacle is about elite institutional nepotism, illegal offshore finance, and mayyyybe the dangers of deranged maxi-consequentialist 'altruistic' ideology combined with habitual amphetamine use...but not really about crypto itself.

Not really about blockchain itself, def... but crypto? It's the peak of a running indictment of hyper-speculation as the core focus of "crypto" - which never sustainably could nor should have been the primary use case. The experiment unsurprisingly proved human nature + unrestrained speculation never ends well.