I'm a crypto moderate, if such a thing exists. Given the vitriol that I see here re:crypto (and the fact that pretty much every thread on crypto has to get dang chiming in to remind people to be civil & adhere to guidelines), there is little chance that actual "crypto evangelists" are going to be commenting here.
Even a comment like this one will get aggressively downvoted in the current climate.
I feel like I am slowly changing my mind about cryptocoins. It always seemed so powerful. Bitcoin's exchange rate may fluctuate but it has value and is nearly indestructible. You could complain that it's overvalued but it's not at all a ponzi scheme. Unfortunately, it seems like the only utility that has arrived is for the black market. A bajillion new coins have been created, some of which also have real value and purport to improve on bitcoin. But here we are in 2022 and while I can see some cryptocoin ATMs in supermarkets, I doubt they're used for much beyond paying ransoms.
Even if we move the most important/useful coins off of proof-of-work †, I think governments around the world may move to outlaw cryptocoins. At which point whatever modest legitimate utility that existed will be eliminated and only the black market will remain.
† this seems difficult or impossible for bitcoin until/unless it forks to something that looks completely unlike bitcoin.
What is "black-market" is socially constructed and dependent on where you are resided.
Crypto has massive uses in evading capital controls in countries that have traditionally had trouble managing their own currencies, like the Turkish Lira or the Naira. In these countries, it is often illegal to hold substantial sums of dollars and not safe to hold these sums on your person.
These are "black market" uses from the perspective of the Nigerian or Turkish government, but immensely valuable to the user - and from my American perspective, probably a positive use case.
Even a comment like this one will get aggressively downvoted in the current climate.