A universally accepted metric can, just like the dollar is measured to be the Means of exchange and store of wealth. So, it definitely can. And, being able to afford a laptop of $800 gives it purpose automatically. When people decides to spend to buy, they automatically find ways to extract value, unless there's no value in what they're buying. An example is how Elon musk is trying to monetize Twitter to a 100% because he paid $44B for it.