I don't have a breakdown of what people are using Ethereum for, but certainly a lot of those uses are stuff like NFTs, i.e. implementing other purely speculative assets. And there are lots of crypto startups using Ethereum, whose money is sourced from a different kind of speculation (er, "investment"). So again, it's not enough to just point at activity and say "look, real value!"
I don't disagree that the vast majority of the activity derives more or less indirectly from price speculation of some sort. But the thing to note is that so much of it is done on-chain instead of on centralized exchanges which have comparatively negligible fees. At the very least this proves the technologies themselves as suitable platforms for speculation (vs simply being the target of speculation).
"Speculation platform" is already a big, legitimate and very popular use case (the importance, influence and appeal of Wall-Street in the US and the whole world is evidence of this).
But how much of the "value" of the chain "as a platform for speculation" is simply the hype around crypto? (Which is, in large part, driven by speculation-driven rising prices of cryptocurrencies.)
For example, anyone could have sold the equivalent of NFTs decades ago using a centralized ledger (perhaps using multiple trusted third parties for security). That didn't happen.
Likewise, it's pretty clear that if you have a startup idea that could be implemented with or without crypto, you get a valuation boost if you take the crypto route. (Hello Long Blockchain Corp.)
So: speculation-driven cryptocurrency prices rise -> entire crypto sector hyped to the moon -> startups move in to collect hype-driven investment -> smart contract activity observed -> this "proof" of utility drives more hype.
