Appealing to your "finance degree" is pretty sad and just tells me you're most likely an insecure new grad or someone who is doing nothing with their finance degree. I've been in the ethereum space for ~6 years now. Demand for ETH comes from demand to use applications or contracts on the network which has continued to grow steadily every year. Every few years there is a new innovation which brings a huge spike in usage due to these applications (and all the get rich scams that come with it). Supply/new issuance is intentionally dynamic, depending on the usage of the network. At times of low usage, supply becomes inflationary and directs this value to the 500k+ validators. At times of high usage, the supply becomes deflationary due to the EIP-1559 base-fee burn.

As long as there is demand to transact or use an application/contract on ethereum, the price will never go to zero. In the long term, after the network and market matures, the price will stabilize.

Note that fiat USD and all modern fiat currencies are also backed by nothing. Their demand comes from two places: the government requires tax payments in their flavor of fiat and their relative stability/utility compared to other assets.

You realize saying “crypto is a scam” is like saying “the internet is a scam” because one person made a malicious website. Makes no sense.

The fact that there are living human “clerics” in 2022

Exactly. Scams have existed forever regardless of the tech.

Lol this has been said continuously since 2009, yet here we are. It’s bigger than ever. Crypto is here to stay whether you like it or not.