Banks make loans for people to buy houses and they pay interest, or they start a business and the business pays interest on the loan. There's economic activity that generates a return. All the crypto "loans" seem to be loans to each other using tokens and they pay interest in the form of more tokens. There's no fundamental economic activity. The only money they seem make is betting that other cryptocurrencies will go up or down, using leverage. And then when crypto falls all their investments lose so much money they go out of business. It just seems pointless speculation, and this is visible that they have all loaned money to each other and so it's a true house of cards.

There's just not much actual purchase of real goods with crypto, no one buying in the store. So the crypto itself serves no purpose other than as a financially lucrative asset.