> Are investors really that gullible?

Yes.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/21/us-soft-d...

Are you kidding me

"Long Island Iced Tea Corp [...] In 2017, the corporation rebranded as Long Blockchain Corp [...] Its stock price spiked as much as 380% after the announcement."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Blockchain_Corp.

As long as there's at least one gullible in the pack, all the other ones will behave the same because they now know there's one idiot that will happily hold the bag when it comes crashing down. They're all banking on passing the bag onto someone else before the crash.

A Ponzi can be a good investment too (for a certain definition of "good") as long as you get out before it collapses. The whole tech market right now is a big Ponzi with everyone hoping to get out before it crashes. Worse, dissent risks crashing it early so no talks of AI limitations or the lack of actual, sustainable productivity improvements are allowed, even if those concerns do absolutely happen behind closed doors.