Thank goodness it's decentralized and there are no single points of failure.
Unless by "it" you mean crypto.com and not Ethereum. Crypto.com is not decentralized.
I believe in bitcoin, works well and I don't blame the consumer for the producer's problems when it comes to power.
But exchanges have become a key part of the implementation.
That's not the real issue though. The issue is the _need_ for exchanges. They provide a host of services, mostly all of which are antithetical to the loftier ideals espoused by bitcoin.
Too many crypto fans waltz passed this glaringly obvious issue and these kinds of stories will never go away as a result.
If banks get hacked, nobody blames the internet. "a small sub section of the system" applies as aptly to the blockchain as it does the global financial system, and I'm pretty confident being a locally popular trading commodity amongst edge communities is not the central goal for bitcoin
Given the transaction fees needed for a distributed-enough network, and the bureaucracy needed when trading, it is not very useful as a currency, at least not for small payments, excluding Lightning.
So it's a commodity.
Do you consider a website breaking a single point of failure for the internet?
Or put another way, how does Crypto.com and other centralized systems prevent me from using Bitcoin the "right" way?
You can point to centralized products built on top of blockchain, but also decentralized ones.
I think you may be forgetting, earlier users of computers were using punchcards..
But in brief my point is that as with internet itself, a protocol that allows for decentralization is not sufficient for something to be truly decentralized. Despite the vast amounts of hype about the decentralization of cryptocurrency and "web3", in practice we are seeing that it's tending toward centralization. Which personally I don't care about except the extent to which I still have to listen to the hype that has less and less connection to the practical reality.
But yes, I would agree that banks are about as decentralized as crypto exchanges. But that's kind of the point, you shouldn't conflate exchanges (or banks) with the currency itself.
Have you considered that you are in the wrong decade? Its year .. 13..? Its time to be up to speed on this.
If you run into a proponent that is also conflating these things you should simply correct them about the difference between onchain activities and third party centralized service providers, which means educating yourself first.
The only reason the hacker gets to keep the funds and have no civil or criminal liability is because of them using the actual decentralized rails and uncensorable contracts such as Tornado.cash