> The people who pay into this are either taken in by the pretense that they’re sponsoring open-source work (in a way orders of magnitude less efficient than just donating money directly), or by the hope that they’re going to win big when the coin goes “to the moon” (which effectively never happens).

No everyone who's paying into this are either a blend of both or just the latter. No one is misguided into thinking this is a more efficient form of donating via crypto than just sending usdc to the recipient's address.