While I mostly agree with you (especially about the energy savings from using alternatives to proof-of-work), we do have to admit that at the moment, crypto-currencies aren't really used to buy much of anything apart from other crypto-currencies. There's not even all that much drug business going on.

Right, but this is not the fault of the people working on crypto. The (good) people working in crypto are working based on principles and values. The ones people keep talking about are the ones working to find a way to make a quick buck without any actual value built for society.

I spent a good part of the last cycle (from 2018 until mid last year) working on an open source self-hosted payment gateway for crypto (https://hub20.io). Even with my ridiculous ideas for how to run marketing and promoting my work and doing basically everything possible to stay away from the radar of the scammers and hype-riders, they were the ones getting to my matrix room and coming up with proposals for "partnerships". The quickest way to get to disappear was by saying "If you think that my project is such a good idea and so valuable, how about you sponsor my work on Github? I'll take even a contribution of the smallest $4/month tier as a signal of interest. If you do it, then I'll listen."

Chalk this one up to human nature and our lizard brains, I guess.

Right, give me even one practical use for blockchain, beyond Dunning-Krugerrand.

Take any system where we depend on some central authority (an institution, a state, a quasi-monopolistic company) that can deny you access to their services, and try to come up with an alternative system that could work for them.

If you don't need any of that and you can leave in a society that warrants you and your neighbors fair treatment, great. But consider yourself priviledged. The majority of people are not just as lucky as you and have to deal with corrupt or dysfunctional institutions, authoritarian states that free exchange of work and goods, companies and banks that take arbitrary decisions and leave merchants without access to their funds, etc.

Before you come with the tired-and-stupid argument of "blockchain will never replace any of these things": yes, we know. This is not meant to be some type of revolution. No one really wants to live in a decentralized utopia, at least none of the sane ones. We just want to have an alternative for the time and places where shit is hitting the fan.