It definitely has utility but it is at the same time overhyped IMO. Some examples of utility:
1. Cross-border transfers without needing permission from banks or identification
2. A fungible digital asset you can hoard and nobody can physically take from you if you secure the keys.
3. If you are a business in a gray or black market industry, you can accept payments from customers online without needing permission from payment processors. Many types of businesses are effectively banned by the banking system.
4. It provides a way to obfuscate your wealth which can help protect against asset seizures. Similar to #2.
These are all true but far and away the dominant use case is long term (10+ year) store of value/dollar inflation hedge- which sometimes implies #2, but many entities are happy to hold on exchanges. Total BTC market cap at $2T- would guess from how relatively little transaction activity there is that at least $1.5T is due to this use case.
It isn't fungible at all since every coin has a history which in some cases makes it unspendable, so it is highly risky to accept transfers without a third party chain analysis report, otherwise i agree
Report which you don't get from centralized exchanges. So you have to trust them and they should somehow be liable for the provenance of what they sell to you.
Probably most CEX don't allocate UTXOs upon buying, but only for withdrawals
1. Cross-border transfers without needing permission from banks or identification
2. A fungible digital asset you can hoard and nobody can physically take from you if you secure the keys.
3. If you are a business in a gray or black market industry, you can accept payments from customers online without needing permission from payment processors. Many types of businesses are effectively banned by the banking system.
4. It provides a way to obfuscate your wealth which can help protect against asset seizures. Similar to #2.