Who's being protected if I'm fully aware of the risks? I feel like education is much more valuable than dictating what is "too risky" for an individual investor.
But agreed, what you've described is the most-likely outcome.
The rest of the population is protected. It's problematic to have both the disillusioned scammed and scammers running around with freshly acquired capital to do more harm to other people.
I am talking about people who won't participate like me. It's in my interest to regulate crypto. It's not because I care about people who lose money investing in some nonsense. It's all good, stupidity should have consequences. I do care however about scammers having more capital to conduct more scams in other areas of life or worse yet using it to buy politicians. I also care about the danger of having some % of the population (mainly young men) who just lost everything and won't find a place in society pushing them to crime or marginalized life.
I mean those are the same reasons we have to ban pyramid schemes for example - we don't want to have a lot of losers (even if they are dumb losers who entered the scheme on purpose) and unethical now wealthy winners.
But agreed, what you've described is the most-likely outcome.