Apart from replying to one of my posts from 1 year ago, you should have a think about how HEX pays people out.
I can't be bothered right now to look up old articles but even blockchain trails showed that indeed, money (ETH) came from new investors.
HEX was given out for free yes. But it was also sold for ETH (you know, lock ETH and get HEX). They gave much more APY for those who locked longer, but paid out a lot also... from where do you think the ETH came to pay people out?
It got a lot of flak because it was sold as a magic money for free, it was sold as Universal Basic Income, when it was nothing like a real UBI scheme should look like.
You can put on make up all you want on a pyramid scheme (no real value other than people dumping more money into it and hoping they get out before it crashes) but you just said it yourself. Put 100 DAOs, put a governance fund, put an insurance fund, add all kinds of revenues, you will still end up failing if there's no utility. Look at Terra. Look at HEX now even, over 90% away from ATH.
No Utility = not real = no value = pure speculation
Given for free but also sold for eth? That seems confusing but locking the coin and then getting paid is called staking. You mentioned something about ubi, I already heard it before in good dollar. It's a kind of crypto project but they don't have a value until now even the project was released long time ago.
Hex may not have a utility but this is still real and they have value (price) although yes they are purely based on speculation. Many are saying that the coin was a scam. That might be true. The ones that sell the coin early when it was still pumping are lucky but those who didn't, they better sell it now, when the coin still has a value.