1 btc is worth more than a car and people are still calling it a ponzi scheme. I find that very amusing for some reason.
A ponzi scheme is where interest on the investment are funded by other investors in the scheme. Unless you are talking about some interest earning crypto program, maybe THAT is a ponzi scheme. But the crypto you buy and sell on an open exchange is definitely not.
Learn what words mean.
Where does the "value" of Bitcoin come from? From being able to sell it to new "investors" at higher margin than you originally "invested" into it.
The Bitcoin network creates no actual value. Everything is percieved speculation on its (apparent lack of) usefulness. You cannot convert Bitcoin back into the energy that was used to compute it. It's a wealth transfer mechanism from those who don't understand how it works to those who do.
It's value comes from being a digital store of value. Before bitcoin there was none. You had a bank account which was a proxy for physical cash. There was no way to hold the cash personally, digitally, and send it anywhere you want.
Before Bitcoin the best analog was gold - hard to create more of versus fiat which is incredible easy to dilute which is why you would want to diversify out of it. Gold though is slow to send, hard to verify, etc...
Bitcoin basically has the properties of gold in electronic form - hard to create, easy to send, easy to verify, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth can be held securely in your hand.
THAT is what makes Bitcoin valuable. Show me an alternative store of value with those properties.