Its not a ‘smoke and mirrors’ but a bubble.
The total crypto market capitalization is more than 2 trillion in ‘stable coin’ dollars.
On the other hand the total amount of fiat/paper currency collected by people entering the crypto market is less than $100billion.
While crypto holders may enjoy the big and growing valuation of their holdings in ‘stable coin’ dollars they may not be able to cash it out in fiat/paper dollars.