25% of black market transactions in Bitcoin, $44,000, that's an interesting figure.
Instead of getting on and creating actual value, people are being talked into taking part in a zero sum game.
I do agree, speculation is a zero sum game. Buy the dip/HODL/If you had bought back in 2013, how they are ponzi techniques, more like market strategies or market sentiments either driven by emotions or fundamentals. These terms are common in crypto community, I wouldn't say really a means of promotion, but simply the market participants expressing themselves, not enforcing it on anybody and if a new crypto investor enters the market on FOMO, without understanding the fundamentals and blindly takes up a strategy and ends up in loss, blaming these participants doesn't make sense.
Bitcoin is getting adopted as an investment, but yeah, promoting Bitcoin as a currency is necessary, speculation is a zero sum game, utility changes that. Hope with LN, apart from the HODL meme we would be seeing the return of the popular 2014's Western Union meme.