Illegal transactions and money laundering isn't going to disappear. A generation of engineers obsessed with crypto will not suddenly stop caring even if a bunch of coins go to zero. The potential prize (control of a global currency/commodity) at the cost of just writing a bunch of code is too potentially lucrative to make people stop trying.
Crypto was much more legitimate when it was used just for illegal transactions. But it was not the "not your wallet, not your coins" folk that made valuation skyrocket, it was these scams.
When speculators were pouring billions into the field, it wasn’t a surprise that a lot of engineers went after high pay checks and the chance of even greater returns on speculative vehicles. The easy money drying up is going to shrink their number a lot, however – especially since the traditional finance sector is building the things people actually use. The number of people using inappropriate architectures is going to plummet when there isn’t a personal financial incentive from their use.
I think most of these engineers are interested in the high compensation that the blockchain space has been able to offer so far. If high compensations disappear, I suspect engineers will switch too.
