That's correct, but 50$ is an amount people may be playing at the lottery, so trying their luck with whatever HYIP / Ponzi is not that uncommon. Unadvised, yes, stupid, yes, still, not uncommon, not a surprise.
Some dude at work buys $50 worth of lottery tickets every paycheck, 26 times a year. He and I started researching bitcoin around the same time, I stuck with it, he stuck with the lottery tickets. Last year when
BTC was hovering over $40k he came to me and told me he had calculated what the amount he spent on lottery tickets would have been worth if he had spent that money on
BTC instead. He was beside himself for being so shortsighted... He's still buying buying lottery tickets instead of bitcoin.
Some people are so emersed in their "get-rich-quick" dream that even if they come to conclusion on their own that the rug has been pulled out from under them, they'll still cling on. This guy I'm talking about is no idiot, he readily admits he's spending the money for the dream. I've tried gently reminding him that
Dreaming is Free.
I mean not just Bitcointalk, but also e.g. ads on news sites. Maybe I just tune them out subconsciously.
Yeah, scam adds have already saturated the internet, even on non-crypto related sites. Wasn't it mycelium wallet that was advertising 1xBit not long ago? I tend to ignore that stuff, but once in a while it's so outlandish. Even quality service like blockchair are not immune.