What it represents is a transferrable store of value that politicians can't print any more of. Nothing more, nothing less.

It's not like a company because it earns nothing, but it's also not like a company because powerful people can't just sue it to death, regulate it out of existence, or send a mob enforcer to burn it to the ground.

In a good world, you always want your money to be invested in things that produce maximum value, and you would invest like Warren Buffett.

We don't live in a good world, we live in a world where politicians print money and manipulate markets. If you invest like Warren Buffett you will perform worse than the market, because The Market has been turned into a Tech Buzzword Casino.

The foundational thesis of crypto is "I reject your definition of value, I value this instead". And again, in a good world, this would be kind of a niche thing and wouldn't have much price appreciation.

But we don't live in a good world, so this idea of opting out of has gotten a lot of traction, and we've ended up with a "stampede" of value moving into these assets which has driven a "crazy" price rise.

Of course there is a downstream cohort which doesn't have any idea of why they might want to buy crypto, they're just chasing green candles, but this is true of everything.