To expand on your comparison to Tesla: The price of Tesla went up because of the expectation of future profits from a near monopoly on electric cars ready to market, along with EV regulations. The price of a share represents the expected potential future earnings of Tesla. This method of valuation was first done by Goldman Sachs in the early 1900s. Stock buy backs are popular among “Growth” companies like Tesla because they function as a dividend for growth sectors.
In the case of the token we own the exchange to a small degree. Profits should be distributed to Uni holders. A dividend is only one way of providing value to company stock owners. Likewise, Uni should provide value to all of it’s owners through a staking mechanism, hopefully tied to voting. This will incentivize voting to create growth and expand volume. As the reward would be directly proportional to the volume on the exchange. Even if the reward is small now, the price of Uni will increase dramatically because of the future potential earnings from higher volume. Similar to Tesla.