Technology

but I'm having a hard time putting my finger on why it lost its sheen.

One aspect might be, that the scam stories are much more popular and easier to circulate on social media than are actual usages. It's a strong online virality bias. Scams and phishing also happen a lot in fiat and cash (albeit relatively lower), but since most of it is so secret and banks really don't want to get bad media, then try to keep such things hidden.

Look at Monero (privacy coin) for example. There is no news on whales, scams etc. there, because it's private so there is no attention given to that. That makes is easier to simply use it and not get an overly negative news bias.

At the same time, cryptos were successfully used during Ukraine for quick money Donations. This was also reported in news, but it doesn't stick so long into the minds of the people as the controversial scams/ftx etc.

Finally, at least with Ethereum there is still around 10 years of development in front of it with exciting new capabilities. Until a few years from now, we'll finally have a system with scalability ans high security as well.

However, until then ethereum will grow slowly.

Also, unfortunately I think the focus of many people has shifted from p2p currency and adoption to money making and investment - which isn't too bad, but adoption still sucks and makes it less useful for now.