You are right shitcoining is a sin. They succeed because of mass delusion lead by a group of gaslighting thieves. They exist only because of their ability to inject marketing energy into the organization, denominated by their coin much like stock, then when their game has reached a climax, they pull the rug and walk away with fiat. Altcoins are shell corporations with a stock issuance schedule controlled by software which is a publication of bylaws. He who controls the software, controls the bylaws. Altcoins have no value, regardless if they are proof of work, not because no energy has been expended to issue the coin. On the contrary, they have no value because that energy is expended on software that is not controlled by the holder of the coin. Bitcoin has successfully shifted the governance of the source code to the majority of the "shareholders" (full-node operators) which is a style of "proof of stake" where fraud and unauthorized changes to the "bylaws" are immediately detected and can be corrected through consensus.