Yet, so many narrow-minded people blindly believe this.

It's the (financially) blind leading the blind in many cases. Rather, it's people who lack critical analysis to give equal weight to both sides.

Bitcoin has its flaws, and has been used for illicit transactions. However, this accounted for ~0.15% of overall transactions.

Source? Here you go.

https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2022-crypto-crime-report-introduction/

The fact that you can convert your local fiat currency into BTC, send it internationally and then subsequently convert it into their fiat currency faster and cheaper than using a conventional money transfer service just shows you how inefficient and ridiculous the current system is.

Funnily enough, XRP, MATIC, ADA and other cryptos are even cheaper and faster than BTC (ETH's fees have dropped, I admit, but still high), particularly for effectively transferring money internationally, yet these are conveniently ignored by crypto critics.

Moreover, whenever I hear people grouping all crypto with BTC (by assuming they're all the same), I just give up at that point.

I have not even covered BTC's potential as a store-of-value and digital substitute of gold.

Anyhow, you get the point, if you can be bothered to do so.

P.S. Yes, I acknowledge that Chris has also covered these points. I am just reinforcing what he has said and adding to it.