Financial speculation is a zero sum game. These "victims" were hoping to gain from the loss of others just like the supposed crypto VCs that have made out well. They're not victims just the losers.
I think the people who we would describe as victims here don't have a sophisticated mental model enough to understand that financial speculation is a zero sum game. (Or indeed that in a liquid enough market, the risk-adjusted expectation of any deal is zero.)
This is why I think we'll see some extensive crypto regulation soon enough, forcing companies that turn real money into crypto to filter out people who don't understand that crypto is a speculative market first and a payment platform second. You can't realistically prevent people from mining or trading shitcoins but you can put regulatory pressure on the ways people access them.
Thr only way to do this effectively is blanket regulation on all cryptocurrency, as otherwise you'd end up with an endless cat and mouse game chasing new coins people use to trick people into entering the market and exchanging entrycoins for the latest scamcoins.
This is all pretty terrible in my opinion, because cryptocurrency could've been so much better. Sadly, the idealists who wanted an independent currency were drowned out by the ruthless speculators who are only in it for their personal profits.
I think that's over-simplifying it just a bit. Many people are conned into thinking it's a safe asset for their spare cash, or it's helping some cause, or it helps them send money overseas to people in oppressive regimes, etc.
There are real victims, but the people dismissing those who constantly warned them, they're not victims, they're idiots.
