I am getting and understanding your point. Just like any other cryptocurrency, its value is determined by its community. Ethereum and bitcoin don't have value when they started but when they had gained traction and there's more volume that came to it, it had made its price higher.
Value was made by the investors and I just felt bad when I've seen AXS too cheap before and didn't buy any of it because I'm not even a breeder and didn't think that it's going to skyrocket that quick so I missed the run but I've seen.
This one is a bit of "different" because you fight and earn SLP and in return you sell them. This sounds like any other coin, like for bitcoin you mine them with Asics and make a profit by selling them, so in this case you need people to "want" it right? That’s how you could make money.
However, here it is also used, SLP is used for breeding the axies you have and that means there are people out there who do not buy SLP just because they believe the price of SLP will go up, surely you can do that if you really want to, just like how people buy bitcoin because they believe it will go up, however people buy SLP mainly to create the greatest fighters for them ever, and instead of buying it directly, they just breed them and this costs SLP for them and you provide that for the people. Sometimes price of SLP goes up and sometimes it goes down but in the end it is something wanted for using it, and not just profiting.
It still goes down to profiting with SLPs, people are breeding because they might be either of the three;
1. Adds more Axies to gain more energies and cards that produce it doesn't matter to them as long as they've got the quantity for the sake of more energy.
2. They're breeders and sellers at the same, individual or team sellers.
3. They're doing that to add more scholars on their end and it will still end up generating them more SLPs to produce more scholars and at the same time more profit to come in.