100% of Crypto "investors" are speculators looking for a quick buck by investing in a system that is pumping needlessly huge amount of carbon into the atmosphere. They're not well-meaning victims who stumbled into the bad part of town, they are greedy thoughtless people in search of free money.

I think that’s unfair.

They may be in search of outsized returns, but I think people can absolutely be victims of the ‘have fun staying poor’ meme. The implication is that if you don’t buy into crypto your assets will be decimated by inflation. I think it’s reasonable to consider that it’s not ‘greed’ but rather fear of being left behind that is driving many victims.

These rug-pull scams rely on the developers having tons of tokens to sell to investors, which is mostly confined to use of Proof of Stake.

So your environmental criticism of Proof of Work is not applicable here. A PoW coin with no premine doesn't allow for a rug pull.

What are some notable proof-of-work tokens that didn't have a premine?