Wow, such a great point. I think a lot of early Doge users were all about "1 doge = 1 doge" and leaving out any thought of fiat. A lot of early btc users were like "why is this worth so much, you can't even buy anything with it."
Also, proof-of-work has inherent but not intrinsic value. Gold and silver have utility, beauty and scarcity. Imagine if a coin could guarantee tokens in terms of locking in future AI compute for yourself (future proof-of-work.) Perhaps micropayments could skip the whole "what's this going to be worth in the real world" type thinking too.
So bitcoin has value like a spare tire does. Most of the time it'll just add fuel costs and reduce car performance, but when you need it and you don't have it you'll wish you did. So the value is really somewhere in between its boom-bust price cycle that was predicted early on. I mean, it's just an insurance policy in case something goes wrong with fiat.
On that note, it should really be buy-hold-forget and use only when you absolutely must. Just like insurance. Anything else and you're setting yourself up for disappointment or a windfall that may never happen.
Also, by integrating real-world assets into the blockchain via tokenization, crypto-currency loses some of this purity. It's a different use case and viewpoint and some may even say it is antithetical to the underlying purity. Yet, by making crypto more stable in terms of usage patterns, and generally more usable as a whole, its real-world value should in theory become more apparent. More government adoption and acceptance would also help.
You may not easily be able to walk across a border with a bag of cash or gold coins, but you can with a piece of paper or memorized URL. So what's that worth to someone? Far better than nothing at all.