I believe because most 'Investors' in the space that have just arrived from Wall Street or Sherwood Forest are buying and selling nominal Ethereum on the Exchanges without ever performing an onchain action. Ethereum is utterly broken and 2.0 may never come.
Totally agreed with your opinion about ethereum. that's a broken blockchain with non sense fees and so many collusion happened on it (miners).
Do you think this is a fair appraisal?
No, So many of them were only following the hype but you can't sure that if all of those wallstreet investors never moving their ethereum from exchange site to the personal wallet. I do believe if this time ethereumw was a broken blockchain with crazy fees but im sure that those wallstreet investors have ever moved their ethereum to the personal wallet. That's why it's not a fair appraisal for them.