"Association" is an understatement. Silk Road was the first time bitcoin was shown to have any kind of real world use-case instead of just being a quirky collectibe for a bunch of nerds. It was a foundational boot-strapping event.

Both, is my guess. It's hard to have someone who embodies a bunch of things you like, especially when that's rare, and then does something despicable. Easier to deny the despicable thing. Overwhelming evidence on that account.

Again, I don't know what's true. But I know that it doesn't matter what's true for how people are behaving, that's the interesting (and disturbing) thing.