The pitfalls of leveraged ETFs are numerous, I agree. I'll give two examples.
Some leveraged oil ETFs plunged lower and lower, and people waited for the recovery. But it got so bad some leveraged oil ETFs became insolvent, and simply closed down, returning whatever money was left... after falling all the way down. So you could take a -95% loss on the way down... and then get your money back. With nothing to invest in to make the profit back.
Another example is an oil/gas exploration ETF. It lost 99.8% of it's value or so, and derivatives became more expensive. In order to cope with the increased costs, the ETF went from +300% leverage to +200% leverage. Meaning, you lost -99.8% on the way down at 3X leverage, and had no chance at a full recovery since the ETF dropped to 2X leverage.
And then there's volatility drag, .... but I said only two examples. Now if you have $25,000 at Interactive Brokers, and take out a $50,000 loan, you pay 1.55% on the loan. That's like paying 3.1% on $25,000. If you put your $25,000 into a 3X leveraged ETF (which you shouldn't), you're paying about 1% on $25,000. Leveraged ETFs do seem to offer cheaper loans for the same exposure, but there's other trade offs.