Their skepticism seems pretty valid to me

The unfortunate thing is, a lot of people have no idea this rule change has gone into effect, and that they're about to get fleeced by a bunch of professional investors.

https://www.kiplinger.com/investing/what-the-nasdaqs-new-fas...

It's legalized theft, and the victims are people least able to defend themselves from it. Most people have no idea what's in their retirement accounts, or track very closely what's being tracked by the index funds they've been told for decades was the safest way to invest in the stock market for non-pros.

It doesn't matter if it's successful or not. Their space business is worth virtually nothing on paper and the funding structures and profit/loss accounts are scary.

What’s holding you back? And what alternative investments are you considering?

I recently did homework to decide whether to double down on VOO (S&P 500 index) or to diversify via VXUS (ex-US index), and concluded VOO is better for my risk-adjusted ROI outlook and time horizon.

Yes their compute costs are astronomical, but that can be managed down over time by more efficiency or mild enshittification that doesn’t create too much churn.