memes

Thanks for that. I am not suggesting it need to be directly tangible like the gold standard, but something ostensibly public (perhaps embedded into an international economic alliance) that is directly ties to ownership of a secure portfolio of investments across a variety of intrinsically valuable staples or otherwise being carefully managed by skilled investors.

Think 401K, and the bond market, but without being subject to the whims of national foreign policy.

Crypto regardless of how impenetrable it is technologically, if it's inevitably controlled by unethical actors, it's still worse for the world and not a safe investment to recommend. And like everything else, tangible or untangable, it's value is still subject to market interest, i.e. as you say, people agreeing to pay for it assuming others will buy it off them in the future.