Its probable that everything you've ever heard about crypto, is a post-hoc justification. That 'number go up' is the result we all want. And anything that's said about the matter, was said because 'number go up' is the technology behind blockchain.
This perspective is blunt, but correct. Crypto is successful primarily by virtue of its unregulated rube goldberg casino revenue model, with just enough of a plausible tech veneer to allow people to rationalize behavior otherwise indistinguishable from naked gambling.
Crypto does not solve the centralization of leverage over liquidity (and thus the ability of a few to manipulate the wealth of many), which is the sole centralization "problem" that matters to the vast majority of people who would use it.
Take away the Potemkin decentralization apparatus known as a blockchain (the premise of which holds that The State and its central bank minions are the only centralizing agents capable of public harm) and you are left with plain old unsexy digital currency.