I think all of these narratives have an element of reality in it. The counter narrative goes against the elements from the bad actors narrative. To combat those we need to combat the real elements from the bad actors narrative: we need to make it harder for bad actors to misuse and abuse crypto through self-regulation. And ZK is the technology that can accelerate this.
True, if we don't self-regulate then the regulators will do it for us. Wondering how you see ZK making it harder for bad actors to abuse crypto?
With ZK we can add privacy preserving KYC proofs, generated locally and without exposing any personal info to anyone. Crypto can be self regulated by imposing these gating mechanisms based on ZK. Sybils and money laundering can be reduced significantly, without requiring people to expose their ID to anyone. Of course, there are big challenges to getting there, both in the technology but also the UX. Some smaller forms of ZK can be used to make legitimate claims, reducing fake social accounts and spam, countering the fake hype issue. I think the possibilities are endless, when we fully unlock the tech and make it scalable.