WHAT ARE YOU PAYING FOR

That's the whole game, right there, both on the buyer side and the seller side. Take it back to Yahoo. You were "paying" for a jumping-off place to this new and crazy "world wide web" and you were paying with attention; they'd stuff advertisements in front of you that because of the hype cycle (see above) were radically overpriced. AOL's model was that you were paying for a dial-up number and an email address and that worked right up until Google (A) did a better job than Yahoo (B) didn't charge you for email.

Social media? You're "paying" to keep up with your friends, except it isn't your friends it's the people you wonder about every third month along with the ninety people you would actively avoid at a high school reunion and as it turns out, the Pandemic was a radicalizing social schism and nearly everyone you know on there sucks.

AI? Well, see, if it's the genie out of the bottle that's worth a whole lot, right? But if it's "aromatic water mix" the price comes down.

BTC at this point is just a bearer instrument. Bearer instruments have value, just ask John McClane. NFTs? "here's an easy way to ensure the legal right to buy and sell something" has a lot of value so long as that "something" isn't "garbage memes and jpegs." I do think there's a viable use for LLMs, it's just not nearly as robust as the hypemasters would have you believe:

The thing of it is, "I have specific questions about a specific thing" does not require a data center. Thus, it has no moat. Thus, it makes no money. Thus, hype it while you can.