That is not an accurate description of witch hunting and witch trials. It was a distinct business that emerged from capitalism and misinformation, in which the properties of women could be stolen for profit. Witch hunters would travel from town to town looking for vulnerable women to legally rob and kill, and those that testified they’d witnessed withcraft got a cut of the profit too. As a result of this practice tens of thousands of women were killed. Carl Sagan dedicated an excellent chapter of his book Demon-Haunted World to the topic, if you’re interested.
Anyway, that is a bit of a side bar to the point you’re missing. Just as it would once have been very profitable but deeply unethical to be a witch hunter, crypto was certainly profitable at a time but only in deeply unethical ways. The late crypto fad was little more an MLM scheme rife with fraud, and any profit extracted was at the expense of whoever is holding the hot potato when the worthless tulip market crashes (if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor…).