According to the first hand sources coming out of Cali and other places, VC money is pouring into the bitcoin space. Literally pouring. That might paint the picture of investor demographics differently. But I don't know. I agree with you that people should avoid being in a position of getting fleeced though.
The question is also, wherelse can average joes with a bit of money actually go and very likely double their money (let alone potentially triple, or if Risto et al is to be believed 10x their money within that short amount of time).
I protesth too much. Let me dig my hole deeper while defending one possible perspective...
I may be wrong but here is my spin...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pets.comBtw, I knew the dot.com bust was coming because I couldn't buy advertising at profitable rates, and I had a successful product with extremely low overhead of a one-man SOHO company. So I knew the VCs were inflating the ad costs by pumping too much money into promoting dot.bomb startups.
Average joe is tired of losing money on snake oil. Socialism is peaking. People want to be taken care of and insured. Boomers are the largest Western age bracket and they are retiring and need to downsize and be more conservative with their finances. The youth are saddled with student debt and often can't find work in the field of their non-engineering degrees.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/where-has-the-retail-investor-gone/2012/08/17/9a915eee-e7cf-11e1-936a-b801f1abab19_story.htmlhttp://www.economist.com/node/21547997http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/facebook-fatal-blow-retail-investors-were-equities-already-150247745.htmlhttp://www.cnbc.com/id/101599140I expect BTC will rise again and the average joes will come rushing in late as they always do, after leaving dejected when they got fleeced out of their hodlered positions at the coming firm bottom.
Remember my series of posts began on the point of diversifying some portion and especially if you needed cash in the next few months because volatility to the downside might not be finished from the 2013 peak.
P.S. the successful design of an altcoin will take this in account and leverage sunk costs, so the average Joe can participate en masse immediately.