> Who in their right mind invests in dog-named coin created 1 day ago?

I guess that at least 2 types of people. On one side you have the pump-and-dump experts, they buy early and then promote the new crypto-coin. The second type are the wannabe, people that see some new crypto-rich guy in the news and feel that they are losing an opportunity. People that have no knowledge about what a crypto-currency really is, that is not interested in long-term but need money now, people that listen to the pump-and-dump group to get their information. YouTube, Twitch, ... are bringing complex speculation devices to average citizens.

I would blame the lack of regulation and the lack of public education.

> This is not different from "penny stocks" investing and GME-style investing or gambling

Lets talk about GME style gambling.

GME has now used the proceeds from its secondary-stock offering to take money from investors, and buy Amazon executives, in preparation for GME's rebirth as an online webstore / distributor of video games.

I don't believe GME will be successful. But the stock market CAUSES companies to do things: to invest into new opportunities. As dumb as the GME-investors are, people are working to make their dream a new reality. And now GME has a few billion $$$ to rebirth itself into a digital marketplace.

------

The same is NOT true for these stupid altcoins / scamcoins. People are sinking their money into a thing (I don't even want to call it a security) that has no value or way to convert itself into usable work.

That's the thing about the stock market: if your stock price flies high enough, you can SPO or IPO and use that money to do something useful.

That's the thing about "gambling on stocks", it actually causes something useful to happen. Now I think GME is still a bad investment (Even with their newfound $Billions, I don't think they're going to make that money back for their investors). But the mechanisms of the stock market are in fact working well.

Money has been taken from funtime gamblers and it has been channeled into a useful activity (the rebuilding of GME into a digital marketplace) with a non-zero chance of success. If it ends up being a success, those who spent money on GME's stock price will be holding onto tickets (stocks) representing their ownership of that bet.

This is how crypto is different from prior financial bubbles. In a financial bubble, people buy regulated securities thinking "they can only go up!". They lose money because the mania fades before they're able to sell.

With crypto, there is so much scammy behaviour around you, you have to go in with the mindset that you're one of the smart ones that will get in early and cash out before the inevitable rugpull.