First of all, the hype of different blockchains has garnered attention. People who fall into the hype hasn’t learned about the financial literacy and the risks of investing into those.
When Axie Infinity became popular in my country, influencers have started promoting the game and so-called scholarship, which is to refer to a new player. Within a few months of playing, people lost money. Influencers haven’t spoken about the players losing money.
Remember, investment into such blockchains carries a risk. Those are called the digital Ponzi scheme by some people.
How are you elucidating Satoshi’s intent? The Bitcoin white paper doesn’t say anything to indicate it would predicate a utopia. It puts forward decentralisation as meaningful. If you don’t think it is, chances are it’s because the existing centralised systems cater to you. That’s great, but there are millions in the global south for whom that isn’t the case. For whom those systems serve to restrain and restrict. For whom there is no reason for a “better use case” than simple and fair value transfer they don’t have access to. IMO, that empowerment alone justifies the means, by which I mean proof of work. As real value transfer always has a cost, whether or not it’s realised by the transactor at the time of the transaction. And under any non-anarchical system of government, someone is realising that cost. PoW doesn’t worsen that cost, it is more transparent about it.