> Stocks represent fractional ownership of a future income stream - the profits of the underlying corporation. You can (in principle) buy a stock, never sell it, and get back more money than you put in. So you're not completely dependent on what others are willing to pay for it in the future.

Correct me if I'm wrong, as I don't know much about stocks, but doesn't that require the company to have/pay out dividends? Otherwise you do require others to buy the stock when you sell it.

> Trading cards (and cryptocurrencies) are not like that

Don't know enough about trading cards to say that you're incorrect, but you're definitely wrong about cryptocurrencies. You can do various things to earn more without loosing your current amount, from staking (Polkadot), loaning (Compound) to getting rewarded for providing liquidity (Uniswap) or for doing nothing at all (Algorand).