> Bitcoin is actually kind of useful for some niche use cases - namely illegal transactions, like buying drugs online (Silk Road, for example),

For the record - the illegal transactions were thought to be advantaged by crypto like BTC because it was assumed to be impossible to trace the people engaged in the transaction, however the opposite is true, public blockchains register every transaction a given wallet has made, which has been used by Law Enforcement Agencies(LEA) to prosecute people (and made it easier in some cases).

> and occasionally for international money transfers - my French father once paid an Argentinian architect in Bitcoin, because it was the easiest way to transfer the money due to details about money transfer between those countries which I am completely unaware of.

There are remittance companies that deal in local currencies that tend to make this "easier" - crypto works for this WHEN you can exchange the crypto for the currencies you have and want, which is, in effect, the same.