What People Think Privacy/Security Is

Not disagreeing with you, but it's a double edged sword inherent to any privacy-focused system. Tor grants journalists and political dissidents access to the broader world anonymously, but is also used by darknet markets to sell CP and illicit drugs.

Privacy coins like monero allow people to spend money anonymously to purchase VPNs or prepaid phones without state actors knowing, but also enables money launderers to do what they do.

And of course there's the pollution problem you mention with any proof of work cryptocurrency, but at least Monero's is more efficient that Bitcoin.

Again not defending cryptocurrencies or discounting your thoughts just wanted to tack on to it.

It's essentially the only cryptocurrency that has privacy, so is good for paying for VPNs and such.

Others like Bitcoin are not private and your transactions are visible.

I'm not a crypto expert, but from what I know it's one of the few currencies that have no kyc (know your customer) in order to use. The whole point of it is to have completely anonymous transactions and untracable/unmarked currecy. I used it once to buy a month of Mullvad vpn just to see how it works. I bought a giftcard with cash, traded the gift card for monero on a somewhat sketchy site, put the monero into an XMR wallet, and used the Monero to buy the vpn with wallet keys. It was a fun experiment but it was just too much time and effort to do it the right way to warrant using it 24/7