I’m no expert when it comes to cryptos, however I do have a group of friends (currently still at uni) who are very much into cryptos and who all hold differing amounts of the various currencies available.
After speaking with a few of them about their decision to buy into cryptocurrencies it became clear that the majority were as you say, jumping on the bandwagon. In fact half of them had actually entrusted some of their uni loans to one friend who was a lot more crypto-savvy in order get more returns from it.
This friend in particular said to me that when he started trading cyrptos he wasn’t expecting to make any money, he was just doing it to learn basic trading skills and to gain familiarity with, and I quote, ‘markets and shit’. He had said to me that he is interested in traditional investments, however there was massive opportunity in cryptos and it was much easier to register an account with a trading platform and start trading on crypto exchanges, but if stocks were simple and easy then he would already have money in them.
Keeping the post short – this was only a small part of our conversation, and only contains comments from 1 of the 3 friends I spoke to who are managing their own cryptos that I spoke to.
As far as cryptos acting as the gateway drug into solid investments goes, I think if this example is reflective of a wider percentage of the younger generation, it shows cryptos are being used as a gateway in pockets largely due to the massive barriers to entry and complexity of traditional trading platforms. Given he is on the waiting list for Freetrade (I made sure to give him my sign-up link), he is, as I know everyone on this forum is, very much looking forward to gaining access to stock markets via a simplified and modernised platform.
In summary, what I gathered from speaking to him was that cryptos didn’t create investors, instead it just gave individuals, who would have become investors anyway, a doorway into the world of investing.