These are the end days for crypto criminals, and good riddance

John McAfee's recent detention in Spain caps off a few weeks where crypto news feeds have been dusted with reports of regulator enforcement actions and bans, arrests, and an exchange hack.

Crypto news hasn't looked like this in a while.

The terrain of the crypto sector may once have been blighted by exit scams and cowboys, but the post-BlockFi, post-Grayscale crypto landscape is an entirely different beast.

Does the recent spate of stories related to crime and legal proceedings suggest that the sector is being mopped up for a brighter future? Are regulators only now catching up? Or does it suggest that no matter how much it matures, the smell of money about crypto will always prove tempting for bad actors?

After a year of deliberations, the United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority found crypto derivative products to be "Ill-suited for retail consumers due to the harm they pose." The sale of crypto derivatives and exchange-traded notes, or ETNs, to retail investors in or from the U.K. will be banned starting early next year.

End-of-financial-quarter crypto reporting tends to be anchored around Grayscale quarterly results, Bitcoin's price activity and, this year, the momentum in decentralized finance.

It has been a long time since crypto was pounded by news of legal action, bans and exchange hacks.

The apparent proximity of the timing of all these activities may have some pointing to a conspiracy among law enforcement agencies and financial regulators to clean crypto up for either a brighter future or to try to wrest control.

What the events of the past few weeks have taught us is that crypto cannot live sustainably outside the reach of the law.

We may be seeing the last wag of the tail of old crypto.