If you treat bitcoins like a lottery ticket, there will be a similarly high number of losers.

Among the people who first got into Bitcoin, many started businesses or actively used it.

A few might've mined it, got bored, stopped, forgot about it until the price rose and then regained their interest.

When the price first rose significantly, more waves of pure speculators arrived. Many of whom initially dismissed Bitcoin: the peer to peer electronic cash system (at the time - e.g. up to ~ 2014).

The number of people who took an interest in really using it as currency has been dwarfed by the number of people who have been attracted for no reason other than to seemingly 'make easy money' by buying and holding. Very often holding it on some custodial service instead of even really 'owning' the coins by holding their own private keys.

This situation of course pleased market makers who run the crypto exchanges and other gateways into and out of Bitcoin & other tokens.

A huge zoo of price-manipulated tokens has been created, of which many have no real utility and have only been created as get-rich-quick schemes, to be pumped and dumped or rug-pulled on less savvy "investors".

The question of "how do we get to a sound financial system?" has been swept under the table by hype and propaganda.

The relatively small number of people who currently benefit from the price increase in Bitcoin and other cryptos is what is seen and marketed.

Those who lose out are not advertised much. They are often painted as having done something wrong. Like selling when they needed money instead of holding on until eternity.

I don't think anyone counts up the losers, and compares their numbers to those who "won" the lottery.

Yet, this is part of what will shape public perception of the utility of cryptocurrency in the longer term.

Anyone who's been to a casino knows that the house keeps an advantage, and unless you're an inveterate gambler, you probably wouldn't consider your money spent there as an investment, but rather be prepared to kiss it goodbye.

To me, that's a key difference between a real currency and a mere speculative asset.