My models do not use any leverage, and they perform better in volatile markets than stable ones. In fact, the only way they can gain alpha is from avoiding drawdowns because during long signals they get exactly the same returns as SPX.
And yes, you are right, it is incredibly difficult to make a profitable bot. 2020 isn't the full story, that's when I decided to give it my full time effort of 80+ hour weeks.
As long as the bots continue to perform near the backtest, yes eventually I would become wealthy with them without other monetization, and as mentioned in other posts, a net worth in the high 8 figures, probably dwarfs what I can make with this website and service so I make no guarantees that it will always be around. That said, I'm enjoying running it and having real people use my product, and it does not hinder my own returns, at least not at our current scale.
Side note: FWIW I think it's probably harder to make a successful crypto bot than equity bot because crypto is far more speculative and doesn't have as much fundamental and macro backing it up--would have to be mostly TA, sentiment and there's bound to be more inherent randomness to the movements since it is so new and speculative.