I superficially agree that most activity is speculation, which in some cases you might as well name "saving", or "investing". I also agree that actual breakthro

I superficially agree that most activity is speculation, which in some cases you might as well name "saving", or "investing". I also agree that actual breakthroughs in utility (DeFi, NFT, Metaverse, Web3) haven't materialized yet. I only disagree on details. Like the use cases you missed, some of a humanitarian nature. For example, still a significant part of the world is unbanked, and has no access to the financial system at all. Crypto, permission-less and only requiring the internet and a smartphone provides a solution. For people living under highly inflationary regimes (Turkey, Libya, etc), crypto can be an unconfiscatable asset to protect their savings. Immigrants often send money back to their home country, and by means of international banking, lose a whopping 30% in transaction fees. Crypto can do it for near-zero fees. A hardcore cynic may call these just variations of "gambling" but to me these details matter. Further, like you said, the very point of any asset is persist value and ideally grow in value. That's even true for just basic currency. So this deep moral outrage that people are trying to earn money is misplaced, it's the damn point of any participant in an economy.