Extremely useful for money launderers, sellers of illegal goods and services, scammers and other users who have ill intent and want a very hard to trace method of transferring value.
it can certainly be used for illegal activities, and can be hard to trace, just like cash. like the internet and all tech, cryptocurrencies can be used for good or bad. freedom and privacy are good things in general and cryptocurrencies give those attributes to money.
i don't believe cryptocurrencies are useful for laundering any significant amount of money. buying and then later selling cryptocurrencies won't work that well because the markets are shallow and you have to deal with cash on both ends anyway. the bigger popular exchanges (where you won't affect prices as much buying/selling) are all KYC regulated.
Also very useful for speculative "investment" gamblers.
agreed, i think this is probably most of the present-day "use" of cryptocurrencies.
...not so useful as an actual currency for every day folks.
some uses for every day folks, especially for those outside the USA:
- replace cash in restrictive countries (India, Greece, Cyprus)
- maintaining your wealth in a country with hyper inflation (Venezuela)
- access to basic banking with only a phone (Africa)
- access to "bank account like" features when you're underage or in a restrictive country
- lower fees on regular remittances to relatives in another country (Asia, Africa, Pacific/Caribbean countries)
- making investments outside of your home country (China, Iceland)
- allowing donations to restricted causes (nonprofits, political activists, WikiLeaks)
- holding an asset not correlated to any other asset class
- paying for something online without giving private info (credit card or bank account)
- alternative to paypal, notorious for closing accounts and unavailable in many countries
- buying pharmaceuticals or other restricted or artificially overpriced items
- accepting anonymous payments for white hat security work
- avoid currency conversion charges while traveling
- avoid credit card chargeback fraud
obviously exchange rate volatility makes many of these uses somewhat tenuous, but cryptos are still better than other options in many places. for those of us in the USA i think speculation is the number one use.