I understand that neither a purchase nor an investment will get any return if the company goes bankrupt like in this situation, but I think they're very differe

I understand that neither a purchase nor an investment will get any return if the company goes bankrupt like in this situation, but I think they're very different when deciding who to blame. In an investment, the investor is intentionally putting money at risk in the hope that the project is successful. It's established up-front that if the project is unsuccessful, the invested money is lost. It's probably unfair for an investor to feel cheated when an investment doesn't work out. With this purchase, Jones paid Xcor in exchange for a service that Xcor said it could provide. Xcor neither provided the service nor can provide a refund, and Jones is very right to be upset. It's probably fair to distrust the people behind Xcor for any future financial commitments, much more than if it had been presented as an investment. You might say that this particular purchase was obviously risky enough that any reasonable person should have seen it as an investment, but I'd be hesitant to assume that the full risks were clear to everyone who paid the money, and the burden is on the company to not make commitments it can't keep. (That said, I certainly don't know if or how the risks were communicated to buyers.)