Sure, it’s exactly the same, except that in one case you buy a little piece of a company that produces something, has revenues, holds patents, brands, factories, shops or distribution networks, and in the other case… not.
If you think one is a Ponzi scheme, they both are.
To prove your point, all you need to do is create a company and get it listed on a major stock exchange with zero assets and the sole stated purpose and objective being to print and sell stock. Be sure to explain to the exchange that this is no different than any other stock.
Let us know how it goes and report back with your listing symbol so we can all buy in, help you inflate the stock price and get rich quick.
A share actually represents a legal piece of ownership of something.
If you own 1/4 of a cookie company and the cookie company goes out of business, you still get 1/4 of whatever is left over from the cookie business (in this case, probably some equipment and hopefully a lot of cookies).
But most crypto is not comparable to stocks. It's comparable to currency. Currency markets exist, and there is an awful lot of speculation in them. And a lot of currencies do fail! But the main difference is, if I buy a bunch of Swiss Francs, I at least know I have one person who will take it - the Swiss government. If I buy a crypto from a blockchain, will the chain buy it back? No.
They are similar in that they both deal with "assets" that are volatile and not equal to real dollars. It is easier for authorities to control and regulate the stock market than it is a decentralized global ledger.
But overall there are many differences in how these assets are owned and used, and how this market is accessed - it is apples and oranges.
I wouldn't say it's a Ponzi scheme, but I tend to agree that they aren't much different because the price of the stock or crypto only goes up by the demand for said security. The only thing that matters in the end for an investor is that there's someone down the line that will pay me more for my shares than I did. I don't really care if the valuation is based on pure perception (in the case of most crypto or GME) or solid fundamentals. I've been more successful trading on human psychology and pulling profits early than any other approach I've tried.
The stock market is comparatively highly regulated - Ponzi schemes are explicitly illegal there, for example. The US stock market regulatory body, the SEC, actually has teeth and uses them.
There is nothing comparable in crypto - so it's a sea of crime.
If you look at the early history of stock markets - pre-regulation - it looks similar to current cypto markets - crime as far as the eye can see. This eventually caused regulation to happen. But everything is playing out much faster now, because it's all digital.
It's also much easier to run a crypto scam than a classical stock market one - way less work and time investment - so the bar is much lower. So, in the absence of much in the way of consequences, we would expect far more scams in crypto, because it's lower effort.