Crypto had no use besides gambling (which includes speculation) and black market currency.
LLMs have massive problems with externalities, but they have concrete and undeniable usefulness. So at the very least from that angle it's decidedly not the same as with crypto.
The hypsters will hype, that will always be the case.
The only use I have for them at work is to generate verbose texts to appease management that would not be equally happy with short concise and to the point answers.
