What is crypto actually good for these days? It's beaten as an investment, it's overkill for most things that just need a database, and smart contracts have to

What is crypto actually good for these days? It's beaten as an investment, it's overkill for most things that just need a database, and smart contracts have to be built in a watertight way that doesn't allow for the kind of theft that seems to keep happening[1]. NFTs...dissolved as expected. This many years on and I still don't see crypto as much more than a solution looking for a problem. 1. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10172700 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10172700