This. And gold and precious metals have long had intrinsic/practical value: aesthetics (gold, silver, platinum used for jewelry and shiny objects) and now practical value (plenty of uses in technology). Now, those practical uses don't completely match up with the end-point value; there absolutely is a "speculative/store of value" component. Hell, even beanie babies had some intrinsic value; both of my kids had some stuffed beanie babies that were treasured toys when they were little. Again, the speculative/store of value for beanies ended up (for a time) vastly outpacing the intrinsic value, but there was SOMETHING there.
Crypto? There's nothing. It's literally electronic ones and zeroes. That's it. Sure, they're SECRET ones and zeroes, very hard to duplicate, steal, all of that. But that's all it is. Does it have value today? Sure. Because enough people/social groups have decided they do, they assign a value, and they trade them. They could just as easily do the same with old stamps (finite supply), original prints of Looney Tunes cartoons, you name it. All it takes to create a class of objects that are a "store of value" is enough people agreeing that said class should store value. That works great. Unless and until the collective belief falls apart. Which, historically, it has for most all such classes of items.
Waving around the dollar, or the pound, or other national currencies and saying "how are these different?" is bullshit, because there is a very clear difference: the dollar is backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. The pound is backed by the full faith and credit of the United Kingdom. CAN those things fail? Sure, see Zimbabwe and other currency collapses. But there's a reason that the dollar is the world reserve currency, and the pound was back in the day: because of the size, wealth, power, and durability of the nation state backing the currencies. Bottom line, if the dollar collapses because the United States collapses to a point where it can't back its currency, we and the world have much bigger problems than the value of the dollar.
But can you make money speculating on crypto today? You bet. Just like you could have made a fortune on tulip bulbs and beanie babies. The catch is making sure not to be stuck holding the bag when the music stops.