Are you pointing out the bounties back in 2017 like when ICOs were kinda hot topic in this forum? If it is then yeah, they were kinda still profitable before, but not so worth it in the long run as commonly I just earned around $20-$25 worth of shit tokens. It might be high in my own local currency, but I had better earnings just hodling Bitcoin so these should be at least somehow be more profitable, but nah.
You know what's the worst? It's a hit or miss situation. Your 3-5 months of work could be thrown away when the team just decided to call it quits and no one's going to stop them from doing so.
I believe the main difference between both categories is that investments are passive, so the person doesn't need to stay tuned all day long to make profit, while a bounty hunter will have to work on different tasks and social medias several hours of his day to get paid. Anyway, investments and bounty tasks involve risks of losing money for the people applying to them.
And this is the reason why I quit bounties starting from the old days of ICO. Just ain't worth consuming electricity over worthless work that I could somehow use it better for freelancing.