The answer, penny stocks (like altcoins) are mostly garbage that are likely to lose nearly all value and it's more in line with gambling than actual investing. When you have wealth, investing is as much about protecting your wealth as it is about generating more. There are only so many places you can put large sums of money where it can be considered safe. Even FDIC insurance only goes so far...
Penny stocks are a good analogy, I'll keep it. And just like with penny stocks, I see poor people putting money in altcoins just because 1 unit is cheap. So they can buy several of them, whereas they could only dream of buying 1 BTC.
However after some time they have lost on their investment, while BTC has gone 3 or 4 times the initial price in the same timeframe...