Yes, fluffypony says that investing in cryptocurrencies to get a return is not a good idea and that it's better to invest in an actual service or productive activity. But George Soros made a billion in one day shorting the British pound. Currencies go up and down. Of course you can make money in currency speculation.
I think his words are commonly misinterpreted. If I recall correctly, he acknowledges the benefits of everyone that in some way contributes to the ecosystem. Regardless of whether that are speculators/investors/coders. However, he also thinks that creating some kind of service or productive activity is more beneficial than simply speculating.
I also think that it's preferable that people who invest in XMR also try to contribute something.
But even if people don't, just buying and HODLing XMR adds value:
without HODLers, Monero doesn't have any value at all and can't be used as medium of exchnage.
If a coin would ONLY be used ad medium of exchange, the value would be almost zero because people buy coins at say 1 sat, immediately buy their alpaca socks and the seller immediately dumps his coins at 1 sat to the next buyer.
Money has 3 stages of adoption:
1. Store of value: people hold coins => a "base value" is set
2. Medium of exchange: people use coins => liquidity at market is needed (people using the coin buy, people receiving coins sell) if liquidity isn't sufficient, people won't use XMR because they get a bad deal when using XMR.
3. Unit of account: people price products at a fixed XMR amount => a lot of liquidity and a stable market value is needed thus this requires mass adoption.
Only block rewards are at stage 3
people using xmr.to and/or shapeshift are at stage 2
Most of XMR action happens at stage one. Speculators are an essential part of the ecosystem.
