In theory, yes (but quality varies a lot on them). The point is that adding a proper eMMC would have made the device a lot more "production ready".
That's why they make the Compute Module with the option for eMMC storage.
It's not for production it's for kids to learn to code on.
So all those many hundreds of thousands of VM hosts out there deployed in production, running their hypervisors from USB must be failing left right and centre... or not.