Technology comes with negative externalities.
The cryptocurrency world needs to accept that it does have negative externalities, and show that the benefits outweigh them, rather than pretending that they don't exist.
I'm personally not convinced that the upsides of cryptocurrencies outweigh the downsides.
In the case of general purpose computing, the upsides are obvious and massive. Whereas it's much, much less clear that the upsides of cryptocurrencies outweigh their downsides.
Governments and banks can't touch your money or see what you're doing unless they get your keys. What other reasons do you need?
We don't need anyone's permission or blessing either. We want our freedom back and society's gonna have to accept this. If that means more crime, energy consumption or whatever -- so be it.
If I say cash and banks get used by the vast majority of organized crime I'd be factually correct, but I'd also be accused of whataboutism. In a world without crypto I'd be seriously hampered by an unfair economic system, so to me personally the pros outweigh the cons, but it'd be anecdotal evidence. Hope you see what I'm trying to get at.
Whether or not a technology's pros outweigh its cons is some appropriately weighted average across all the people that it affects. The person who gets hit by crypto-enabled ransomware likely feels differently from you.
I also think there is some moral weight to particular benefits. Dealing with unfair economic systems is definitely a "better" benefit (for some definition of good) than those people whose benefits are currency speculation or ransomware.