Yep, this.
"useful"
and
"no use case"
are not the same thing.
Clearly anyone who isn't completely blind can see that you can use crypto for some things. It's pretty easy to demolish the strawman that is 'there is nothing to can use that for'.
...but given that technically it's like an unregulated, very slow, very expensive payment system, it's far harder to swallow the idea that it has compelling use cases, by which I mean, "I would be convinced to use this" unless:
- you are doing something that is illegal
- you're doing something traditional payment providers don't allow
- you want to avoid taxes / tariffs (see, doing something illegal)
- you want to avoid the red tape to do something (eg. banking, coin offering)
- you're speculating
Otherwise, you can just using something else, that is faster, simpler, cheaper and safer (ie. legal protections, etc.).
Many of the 'novel' ideas in crypto like asserting ownership via NFTs, smart contracts, etc. are not fundamentally restricted to crypto; you could run them centralized, and it would make almost no difference at all. You'd still have a CoinSpace wallet that you convert USD to CoinTokens on, and upload your smart contracts to.
The crypto part of this is not compelling, it's just a pain in the ass to deal with, technically, and commercially toxic by association with bad actors.
On top of that, the crypto is fundamentally worthless unless you have people who want to buy it, so it is in bad faith that most crypto proponents advocate for it; it is in their interests, not yours, to be involved with it.