I get invites to pump and dump groups on the daily on Discord. It's unbelievable. Not only is it illegal but it also contributes to the myth that cryptos are scams and extremely volatile.
Do you think that governments will crack on those groups?
Do you think that the people in those groups know that they're hurting the cause more than anything?
1. The government's will likely not care, there's not much regulations for cryptocurrencies and there's so much scams in the world in general that it's probably impossible to effectively crack down on it, especially at this age when people do it over the Internet from any country in the world and can create as much fake profiles as they want. It only makes sense to try to catch only the biggest offenders and educate people about scams.
2. Those groups aren't created to benefit participants, they are created to scam them. And the people behind them only care about their own pocket. But you shouldn't worry too much about the public image of cryptocurrencies, every technology has some downsides and risks, but the legitimate use will always outweigh it.