Things that are perfectly fine when only a few people are doing them often become a real problem when hundreds or thousands or millions of people are doing them. That's why investors need to be accredited. Otherwise legions of hopefuls will throw their nest eggs into overly-leveraged positions sold by the unscrupulous. That's what happened in the early days of stock markets.

But take a step back and think about it for a second. You can put 'ways to make money' on the axis of 'conscious involvement'. On the left you'd have 'keeping a job', then on the right you'd have 'hiring a professional money manager'.

As you traverse the scale, returns on investment vs. conscious attention devoted tends to decrease. You need no money to get started on a job, but investing in the stock market requires large amounts of cash to generate significant returns.

Until you have a quarter of a million dollars net worth, it just doesn't make sense to do more than slow-growth passive investment over time to fund a very specific event, retirement. Even there it's a hard sell for many people. You need to make a lot more than the average for retirement investment to really work for you.

In the middle of the scale, between having a job and investing, is running a business. If you want to move up the economic ladder, the move isn't from salaried professional worker straight to investor, it's to hanging out your shingle and carving out an economic niche. In business, it's much easier to earn the kind of money you need to make investing work.

Over time, you can learn your niche to the point to where you can direct others to exploit it rather than do it yourself. This is where the line blurs between business and investment, where you have a working system turning inputs to revenue, and all you have to do is watch the numbers to make sure they keep going up. And you don't need to be accredited to do it.

You might think, "oh, but I could day trade and earn a ton of money if the SEC would just let me!" If you don't know the principles, the market is going to burn you badly. If you know the principles, then you'll know it's not a fast road to riches. Business will get you there much quicker.

The SEC is aware that the accreditation limitations are somewhat onerous, so what they're doing is opening up some Series A rounds to unlimited numbers of unaccredited investors. If you want to bet on an emerging market, this would be the best way to do it:

https://www.seedinvest.com/

I considered investing in Virtuix, but decided I needed the money accessible right now more than I needed a lottery ticket, no matter how much I believe in the potential of VR. What did I need the money for? Tiding me over while I get my startup off the ground.

Don't shy away from learning or starting a business. It'll make you a better investor when the time comes.