so one could invest in the infrastructure
This is a big part of it. A lot of times, in Ethereum, you hear people referring to contracts or various verification operations ("mining blocks") as costing "gas". Basically, it comes down to these calculations needing to cost someone some sort of fee. More explanation here:
https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/3/what-is-meant-by-the-term-gas
**Note: If you've never visited StackExchange or StackOverflow, be prepared to potentially enter the biggest clusterf**k on the internet. Where everyone is smarter than you and lets you know it. And they're not wrong most of the time.
I think this is what frustrates
@gtluke when these discussions happen. I don't know how he views it (and don't want to speak for him), but based on reading what he writes I think we feel similarly; that the underlying infrastructure is very exciting. Putting money into the currency is more of an infrastructure investment, as fees for "gas" are paid using the actual ether token. It's less akin to currency trading and more like commodities or durable goods from that perspective. One day, the EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine, on which all of this code executes) could be huge and require lots of Ethereum in fee to continue running. In a few years time, 1ETH could be very valuable as a fee for transaction processing.
Disclaimer: I did make some money in ETH in a relatively short period of time, but I set a hard limit on myself to close some positions at a certain level, and I didn't get greedy. This is key with any short-term play. HOWEVER, I don't think either myself or Luke are claiming it to be a get-rich-quick scheme. It's a fairly long view, from where I sit. No doubt is it a fairly risky one, as well. Like
@soundz said above, regulators could swoop in and strangle the system to the point where it's no longer viable and suddenly your ETH is worth nothing. We're already getting there - the IRS has released literature regarding how to claim capital gains from crypto. Personally, 90ish% of my investments are in the methods that others have espoused elsewhere in other threads. Traditional tax-advantaged vehicles, index funds, yadda yadda. But this is fun for me, and there's a certain risk-reward relationship that you need to be both able and willing to accept. Or, as my generation likes to say....HASHTAG YOLO
People generally assume that crypto fans are crazy (I'll fess up, I'm pretty nuts) and are just trying to pump and dump (some do). I'm just very excited that there's a new way of doing things that may or may not be better than the status quo, and it looks like it's on the fast track to upset the apple cart. I find pleasure in upsetting apple carts of many flavors. But more than that, people more broadly could really benefit from it, and I think that's pretty cool.
I think this is called "fanboy"-ing. See also: fatbikes.