Stocks do not need buybacks or dividends. They are rights to control a share of a company, which earns (or potentially earns) money. That’s inherently valuable even without a stock market to determine a price. You control a machine, which makes things and earns money.

Crypto is only valuable, because others think so, too. You control a place inside a distributed list. Others think a place in exactly this list is valuable, while all the other lists are shitcoins.

Yes it does. Proof of stake networks (Ethereum, Tezos, etc) pay dividends + transaction fees to stakers, decentralized exchanges pay a cut of fees to token holders (with decent P/E ratios), and the list goes on.

This is an out of date view that does not match the current reality.

As a counterpoint, YFI literally buys back it's token from fees earned from users using their automated yield farming strategy. There are plenty of duds around, but that doesn't make everything a dud.

Not all stocks have dividends.

Buybacks are very popular in crypto. Its call token burning. Binance does it all the time with BNB.