Regulations saved the companies in those stock markets, not the stock market itself. The companies that leveraged their positions insanely actually lost a ton of money when the stock market crashed and right after that got saved by the regulations and goverments and they reinvested when the market was crashed and of course the new money coming in fixed a bit of the stock market which took time but the people in those markets actually lost a ton of money. So if cryptocurrency ever gets regulated I am 100% sure that whales will be saved whenever something bad happens and we will be the one thrown under the bus.
with regulation will certainly increase investor confidence. moreover there is legality from government, which will be safer. and it is true that whales will lose space to move. that means market will return to health
We all know that when there is no law, there is no sin and as a result of that, there would always be people who would do things greedily without even imagining those who it is affecting and that is totally not something that should be allowed.
We have seen the cryptocurrency space and how some form of manipulations are pretty much easy, but that is because the space does not really have much rule applied to it at the moment, when compared to the likes of stock market that you really would not want to be caught in some activities, otherwise, you get screwed and may even spend most part of your life in jail. If we get to have such in place, it would really bring about a matured space.