What Problem Does Ethereum Solve 2024 Edition

I've been following this space for about 9 years.

Enough that I threw in some dollars and kind of just never let my ETH's go since 2016, a small DCA and then discipline to forget about it. I remember at some point ETH2 really sketched me out, and at one point I was nose keep in the literature and really understood the mechanics of it. Because of ETH, I am independently wealthy and pursue my career/passions without restrictions. My family is forever thankful for buying into the Vision of ETH.

Grown up the last 9 years, and am super thankful for learning about these communities early in my life. But I have also lived in the real world, work in technology / cybersecurity, even employed at a fintech company that implemented a crypto currency adjacent technology for ledger tracking and tokenization enabled workloads – but it was 100% isolated, private, and used by the company – for the company – built on top of a fork of a now popular cryptocurrency.

From a real world applied problem solving standpoint, I'm not stuck on either of the following questions – independently, I have strong answers. But together, I simply don't.

Which leads me to the following:

1. What problem does ethereum solve, AND
2. How is solving that problem going to lead to a financial gain or profit in holding ETH

There is the Vision of Etherum, and then there is the Applied nature of Ethereum in the real world outside of internet forums, discord, trading apps and reddit.

8 years ago, someone asked the question, "What Problem Does Ethereum Solve", here – https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/50mvyx/what_problem_or_need_does_ethereum_really/

2 years ago, someone asked the question, "What Problem Does Ethereum Solve", here – https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/134or91/can_someone_please_tell_me_what_problem_does/

1 year ago, someone asked "what does eth mean to you", here – https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/18u6oei/what_does_ethereum_mean_to_you/

Honestly, I don't think the answer in solving these problems leads to ETH becoming more valuable. In fact, I think the opposite is true – the value would either:

have to stabilize and maintain a very low price for adoption , or , the application of ETH would be by private blockchains running completely independently from the main net, and businesses, corporations and government institutions peering and partnering between each other.

Not looking to delve (yes, ChatGPT has taught me new words) into speculation and pricing and current market hysteria. That is for children. I'm trying to understand if the problems solved by ETH lead to monetization by public ETH holders. Because if not, then that is a challenging space to operate in.