I don’t think being interested in the (ancestors’) race of a co-worker is necessary racist. I worked with people with all kinds of cultural backgrounds and it might be just an interesting topic to talk about. If someone has family in Iran, Senegal or Indonesia that’s definitely more interesting to me than a conversation about weather or last night’s football game.
The problem with most crypto compared to regular money is that it’s often seen as an investment. However, one of the most important factors for a currency that is used in everyday transactions is stability and predictability. Money is supposed to ease trading goods and services as a universal middleman. It’s not supposed to make someone rich who invested first.
Of course there’s also inflation and deflation with regular money but as soon as that’s getting out of control, it typically leads to serious economic issues.