This is sort of my take as well. Altcoiners can really make it rain (and often do) because they get rich off scams. Crypto companies can easily donate millions to whatever they want, just print a few more xrp to cover it.

AFAIK Monero has been PoW since forever. Where can Ibsign up to get it for free?

The donation was from the Ethereum Foundation who got their ETH for free and has been dumping on suckers willing to pay for it ever since.

The donation was from the Ethereum Foundation who got their ETH for free and has been dumping on suckers willing to pay for it ever since.

That's exactly it. They pre mined all their ETH, then switched to PoS to maintain their majority influence over the network. ETH is crypto fiat. Their pockets are deep, because they can print tokens for free.