It solves the urgent problem of the terrible scarcity of venues for financial speculation in an era of low interest rates and almost 0% real interest rates.

The economist Paul Krugman said that the cryptocurrencies had some of the same ballistics as gold, and gold does well when real interest rates are low, as people lack profitable investment opportunities and so they must seek increasingly aggressive and risky investments.

The cryptocurrencies have the advantage over gold that they can claim to not be gold, nor any known thing, they can claim to be something completely new, with unknown dynamics. This allows for a certain amount of hype that simply wouldn't be possible for gold.

And of course, in terms of ease of moving it around the planet, cryptocurrencies have some real advantages over gold, and therefore are probably stealing a lot of the risk taking that might have otherwise gone to gold.

It's best to heed Warren Buffet's advice to stay clear of investment opportunities you don't understand.

I'm seeing people in tech who are way smarter and more knowledgeable than I'll ever be, scratching their heads around web3 trying to figure out if there's anything of value. If they don't get it, I'm not going to get it, which either means I'm not smart enough to invest time and money in it wisely (as per Buffet) or it's all smoke and mirrors around a giant MLM or Ponzi scheme to relieve lesser fools of their money.

Moving money upwards in the pyramid.

That's a feature to draw in more bag holders. The closer you look the more its value disappears.