Even the simple ability to send crypto to/from anywhere in the world at a fixed fee without having to rely on centralized institutions is huge. For countries like Argentina with hyperinflating currencies, strict capital controls, distrust of banks is so high (due to a bank run 20 years ago) people buy houses with cash, the advantage is obvious. Even in first world countries however it's advantageous to be able to transact without being at the mercy of a few payment providers that shut down your account and blacklist you on a whim, and there's nothing you can do about it [1]

Decentralized finance is huge. Borrowing/lending without having to rely on a central intermediary. Insurance without any central intermediary [2]. The ability to trade tokens without any central intermediary.

Tokenization itself enables decentralized governance in the form of DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), and to for example fundraise without having to give 5+% to private companies like Kickstarter, Patreon, or whoever. There's an attempt to create a universal basic income [3] Tokens themselves enable communities to have a vested financial interest in their own success, which sure could be a bunch of people holding apes and attending yacht parties, but could also be ENS [4] or MakerDAO managing a decentralized stablecoin with billions in value.

NFTs enable creators more opportunity to monetize their work such as via selling NFTs with exclusive privileges where the creator can even obtain royalties upon retrading, decentralized marketplaces for digital or even real life goods like ticketing or real estate, the ability to reuse digital assets across different applications/games. People here love to fixate on the stupid jpegs and the fact that the URL often points to a centralized server, but that's really not the point. NFT again is just digital scarcity (see the Twitter thread I linked in the parent comment [5])

Decentralization and users owning their own data is huge. Imagine owning your own content, and being able to utilize various frontends and/or build on top of the data. This means having a digital identity that can be reused across different platforms (eg. keeping your posts + followers). Don't like Youtube's algorithm? Use a different one. And of course there's censorship resistance. The modular nature of all this would enable enormous innovation, just like it already has in defi (for example look up dex aggregators like 1inch and matcha, or Curve and Convex finance)

Zero knowledge proofs in addition to enabling privacy and scaled computing also enable trustless anonymous voting. Meaning that an election can be run in a decentralized manner that's mathematically proven to be legitimate without revealing anyone's individual votes. This is massive.

I could go on all day but then I might as well write a damn article. This slide deck is a nice summary [6], as well as these threads from Chris Dixon [7] [8]. It seems most commenters here would rather just complain about bored apes and scammers, but there actually is a lot of cool stuff going on if one actually takes the time to do their research.

[1] https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/section-230-isnt-proble...
[2] https://blog.etherisc.com/etherisc-teams-up-with-chainlink-t...
[3] https://www.proofofhumanity.id/
[4] https://ens.domains/
[5] https://twitter.com/RAC/status/1490431018792226817
[6] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6788792...
[7] https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1442201621266534402
[8] https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1425645842552086532?lang=e...