what really got people (and apple) worked up was the idea that someone could create a "nothing" and make a lot of money with that. now we laugh because we can all create crypto tokens and sell them to naive investors.
While there's undoubtedly an intersection between the set "tech geeks who want to be early adapters" and "people for whom losing $1K is no big deal", they're not identical. Remember that the original iPhone was $399[1]; losing 2.5x the cost of the phone to somebody's dumb software joke would not have just been an "oopsie, I guess we'll have to get a slightly cheaper jar of caviar for afternoon tea, Lovey" moment for a lot of us.
[1]: Technically, it was $599 for the 8GB model, but that initial price only lasted 3 months, and early buyers got a $100 credit in partial offset.