Well, I'm definitely determined to stay far away from the rest of this 'discussion' now, but I had to just throw this out because it seemed applicable (and depressing, I should add):

On one hand count the coins you know that have never seen significant market manipulation, and yet have a positive current value compared to 1 year ago. (This doesn't count for coins less than 2 months old... they might just be gearing up in that case).

Got both of them? (LOL j/k there might be 5... I just can't come up with more than 2).

Now on your other hand, count the coins that you've made profits on (or could have if you'd cashed out) in the past two weeks that were obviously a PnD scheme that you merely happened to get prior to the pump... if you trade much at all - I bet you've already got your five for that hand.  

The obvious point it that crypto is completely sick with these schemes... including BTC.  I'm not suggesting I have the solution - I don't.  It's clear from past history that while regulation will almost certainly not prevent all of the fraud - it will likely kill almost all of the incentive for many that are actively developing... especially in areas that by definition are completely anti-regulation in nature (like truly anon coins and decentralized markets).  

Under which laws would you regulate anyway... the UN's?  I know what the US government would say... but I also know the rest of the world is sick of us going all "super-cop" on every other country's citizens too!  That and our regulators aren't smart enough to figure out the stock market very well... I can only imagine how good they would be at regulating something they really don't get.

So free markets aren't working, anarchy isn't working, regulation won't work, etc.  What are we going to actually do about it? I realize that all markets (including regulated ones) are full of scams - not like Madoff, Worldcomm, Enron, Bear Stearns, etc. happened under the radar these past several years.

My final (rhetorical) question:  If cryptocurrencies don't change a majority (or even minority) of the downsides to fiat and traditional financial instrments... why are we here then?  Hopefully, your answer is better than mine at the moment.