Stocks: To get on any exchange, companies have to pass several rounds of due diligence from early investors, they usually have 5-10+ years of history running their business, and companies don't go public unless they have found a product market fit and a business model that generates enough cash flow or growth to be profitable over a set time horizon.

They also have forced disclosure and a lot of information are available to the public (if you look for it.)

It doesn't prevent scams and frauds but it's a minority of the total stocks offering.

Even if your chance of making outsized returns is low, at least you can diversify and roughly limit the damage from monetary debasement.

Meanwhile "Crypto": Anyone can literally copy/fork any existing blockchain, invent a new name and create a $5 logo, and this "crypto" can then be shilled to any telegram/discord groups as "early access deal of the century".

If they get enough traction/VC backinga and they get on an exchange like Binance (or Coinbase), it's usually through some non-public deals where the exchange get tokens, or the "crypto" has to buy tokens from the exchange (like BNB) to get listed.

It's overall very opaque, the "crypto" board is usually located in some islands or fiscal paradises where no one will reach them (how many scammers like do know, su zsu etc are still not behind bars... ?) with 0 recourse for the public.

And if you check the history of "crypto", there's really 0.01% of the coins that were created that didn't go to zero yet.

People usually favor crypto for the lure of outsized returns and lambos, but run the numbers and see for yourself: usually everyone loose except the early investors who decide when to pull the rug.

Summary:

Stocks : Regulated speculation.

"Crypto" : Unregulated speculation ending in ruin 99.99% of the time.

Bitcoin : The only known element in this solar system with a finite quantity that might replace FIAT as money.