I continue to believe crypto operates like a collectibles market; similar to stamps, beanie babies, rare coins, baseball cards, etc.

In this model, the "cards" are the actual unit coins and the "players" are the type of coin (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc).

So long as there's a vibrant enthusiast community, the assets will hold some value but except for a few mainstays, these things tend to atrophy over time.

For instance, yesterday I was helping an 80 year old neighbor clean out her garage. I found some wonderful vintage RadioShack calculators from the late 1970s. They're extremely rare and also, extremely worthless. The supply and price of something can both tend towards zero.

I agree with you completely.

But you may be overlooking that they're also liquid, popular, benefit from network effects, the supply is algorithmically defined in many cases, and mostly fungible.

This should make for more interested communities.

This distinction is weird to me. Bitcoin is also created by fiat. If trust in government is lost, there is no governance nor money. If trust in bitcoin is lost, there are no running nodes nor tokens.

And if trust in government is lost, there is also no liquidity.

That's not true. You don't need strong government to have circulating and widely accepted metal money for example.