So then what's the point of this thing then? All these crypto things reek of ponzi schemes and I have yet to see an application of it that makes me think the technology is good/needed. So far, crypto is a solution looking for a problem.

How can you create a coin, get investors into a private token sale (or even allocating pre-mined coins), hype the trojan horse onto the public to get them involved, then getting the coin on main exchanges and then investors dumping the coin causing it to be worthless. All this being unregulated by the way.

This happens all the time with these projects most recently ICP (Internet Computer) and just one of the reasons why this is all a complete scam.

There is a name for this type of rinse and repeated scheme.

There is no reason why this can also happen to Solana, rendering cryptocurrencies even more worthless than real money.