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You ran towards an unregulated market - literally because it was unregulated, these promises couldn't be made by a regulated entity, and now you're unhappy because you feel screwed. That's literally why the regulations exist, but you have to accept that you aren't just going to get "free money" offers in real markets. You're going to get them in unregulated markets, and they're going to be lies.

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Well, you make a fair point, expecting to get rich quick is obviously unrealistic. I think people like me got caught because with Helium at least the basic economic premise of "you are being paid to offer your internet uplink/bandwidth for use by others" makes sense. This is in contrast to some of the various crypto ponzi schemes where the only way for a token to gain value is for more people to buy into it.

If we took crypto out of the equation entirely and Helium was a startup offering payments in $ while not being transparent about their usage/adoption rates, would we feel the same way about those who "fell for it" and invested in miners? I'm honestly not sure.

It’s a standard MLM tactic to pretend like some product at the bottom of the pyramid makes economic sense to sell. E.g. Herbalife sells some kind of herbs right?

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