I have not been paying much attention to the crypto space in a long time. Over a year ago I spent time researching it and ultimately purchased both Ethereum and Bitcoin, bith are down a full 50%. I purchased it as a learning exercise with no intention to sell it in the short term. I have no hope of recovering my "lost" money in the short term. I did not "invest" enough that a total loss will make a difference to me.
I did intend to buy an NFT, to actually go through the process of transacting with my bit coin to just go through the process, but there was literarily nothing that interested me enough to spend my crypto on...
There we plenty of people who got in at the right time and sold at the right time, who made money, but there was too much hype around the space to make me comfortable that it wasn't anything else than hype.
Crypto is far too complicated for mass adoption. Most people keep their money in exchanges which makes no sense, to me, if you understand crypto... sure it is easier, but you expose yourself to a lot more risk.
The metaverse is different. There are actually many practical use cases for it and it does not take a genius to get involved. The only thing that bothers me is one or two companies owning the the metaverse. In much the same way that a handful of companies run the WWW today