Crypto is short for cryptocurrency, crypto tokens, and crypto projects. When people talk about the crypto market and crypto industry they are referring to it all.

Crypto projects can mean DAPPs and sometimes even smartcontract platforms.

If you believe that Crypto refers to cryptocurrencies only, then by your reasoning if someone has a portfolio of crypto tokens (which are not cryptocurrencies); UNI, SUSHI, AAVE, COMP, CAKE and 1INCH then they don't own any crypto according to you, because they aren't cryptocurrencies.

Just listen to people when they talk about Crypto, they aren't strictly talking about cryptocurrencies. IME that's only what people who aren't active in crypto believe, they think Crypto = Bitcoin, or alternatives to Bitcoin.

Yes it's impossible to predict the future, no fukking chit. It doesn't matter if crypto is worthless. The point is: if you happen to buy and sell at the right time, whether through luck or good judgement etc, then you can/could've made a ton of money.
So you can keep calling it a Ponzi scheme all you want, but all that is completely irrelevant.

From a financial point of view: what does it matter whether you make a million investing in amazon stocks in 1990 till now, or whether you make a million in 2 years investing in dogecoin? I'll tell you: there is no difference. Money is Money.

The NYSE isn’t going to use a publicly traded decentralized crypto project to speed up trade settlement time, they’ll just fking optimize their systems with their own blockchain integration.