I had not considered this as a reason for the general resistance to Bitcoin that I experience here in the US, but I'm wondering if you aren't on to something.

I, too, have the experience of speaking to people about Bitcoin and receiving scam warnings or eye-rolls. Often I attribute this to fear or ignorance -- that the people I'm speaking with are too afraid to take a risk and that we are conditioned to avoid financial scams by having an almost allergic reaction to new financial things.

But maybe it has more to do with safety. That the people I am speaking with have had the luxury of a fairly stable economic and political environment for decades and that leads to a unreasonable attitude toward anything new.