How do you think: does crypto make criminal life much easier? We all know that criminals use crypto to sell drugs, guns, people and everything else. Did crypto make doing such things easier? Earlier criminals had to think how to keep their anonymity and get paid, how launder their money, how to not get catched with this. But now they can just use crypto and all the headache about this financial troubles passed away. Of course there is much bigger positive points of crypto and not every user of crypto is a criminal, but anyway are you worried about this? Criminals also worsen the reputation of crypto that is not really stable itself.
It was like you said in the early years of crypto, but fortunately the situation has changed since then. Criminal activity in Cryptocurrency has dropped 80% since 2013 according to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) special agent Lilita Infante, who stated it in August 2018. So, if we are talking about present times, objectively criminals can't worsen the reputation of crypto, but of course media can by presenting wrong and outdated information as of current interest.