Even though it was given away there are still a lot of people who bought at the peak and now lost most of the value.
Unfortunately that currently applies to just every crypto in existence (or close to it) -- even BTC & ETH would be a pretty big loss if purchased at their peaks. Below the top 20, and the loss becomes even wider. As of yet, alts haven't really recovered. It's not isolated to Ardor, which in a way is a positive, I guess.
Yes, but I was more referring to the post before me saying that at least this was distributed for free. It somehow implies that people didn't lose, but actually a lot of people lost when they bought in at some point. It is also true that you lost with literally any crypto you bought a while ago.