I had the same thoughts about crypto until about a year ago, but today I disagree with most of those points.
Most cryptos, especially bitcoin, are terrible for use in criminal activity. They are public ledgers where all transactions are public and recorded on chain. Yes you can have pseudonymous wallets, but if criminals want to exchange BTC for fiat or realize their gains, they will have to convert to cash and that can be very tricky. In fact by far the most dominant untraceable currency for criminal activity is plain ol physical US dollars.
The False Narrative Of Bitcoin’s Role In Illicit Activity
This point is true. Keep in mind we printed nearly 30-40% of all our USD ever created in just the past 18 months. We could soon be one of those countries.
There are definitely different investors in Crypto just like there are different investors in the Stock market. Certainly a lot of it is speculative.
Now as to the point of "create value" the argument is that there is tremendous amount of "value" created by crypto currencies, especially the top ones like Ethereum and Bitcoin.
Just compare Ethereum vs Paypal for example. Paypal did 936 billion USD in total transactions in 2020. Ethereum in Q1 of 2021 alone settled 1.5 trillion USD in transactions. Ethereum alone has about 160 million users and growing every day. Compare this to paypal with about 350 million users. Market cap of Paypal is about 350billion USD.
If I told you that today, I created a company that settles 1.5 trillion dollars in transactions in 3 months, has 160 million users, and is the foundation for decentralized finance, do you really think that the value of this network is zero? We are finally seeing an internet moment where the banks are being truly but slowly replaced by some crypto currency applications, and there is tremendous upside to go. Now look at the market cap of Banking industry vs crypto currency and you'll see the value. Just my 2 cents on the whole "it has no value" argument.
Media is always late to the party. They don't tell you to invest in it when it was crashing in March of 2020, when Bitcoin was trading for 5k and Eth for a few hundred dollars. I still think if anything they are hostile to crypto currency overall.
I completely agree with the first part. Everyone needs a plan with objectives. I invest in Real estate, total market broad ETFs/ Mutual funds and allocate about 10% to Crypto. I believe we have come to a point in time where it is unlikely for crypto currency to disappear. Could it go through an enormous crash like the early internet dot com bubble? Absolutely. But in 10 years + I believe the Crypto and digital assets are here to stay. If you go by this thesis, then you can invest in crypto currency using dollar cost averaging approach during the ups and downs, but over all the trend in the next 10 years should trend up over time. My speculation is that it will outperform the Stock market and real estate market in the long run. You really need a long time horizon in this just like any other investment. If you follow this, it should be less speculative on day to day moves and more of an investment thesis.