"Money laundering and buying drugs" "No intrinsic value" "Energy waste" These arguments have been in the wild for over 10 years and discussed by both sides in much detail. The article brings just personal opinion of author and probably the most dumb down version of these arguments I have seen. Not sure if satire or not.
Can you answer the question of the article? > Can you please show me the benefit to society of cryptocurrencies?
First, society is a semantic shortcut, not something that actually exists as something that can experience gain or harm. Only individuals can, and many have, and do.
I had an unbanked contractor, a refugee from Russia who could not get a bank account anywhere he went, and had to hop countries a lot as visas expired, and I paid him in Bitcoin even though he was completely unfamiliar with it when I proposed it, because we could find no other solution. He and I both benefitted substantially from that. I'm aware that other solutions exist, and we had exhausted all the ones we could find, as one by one my bank started rejecting transactions as fraudulent.
For most of what we want to do in the US or the rest of the first world, we have a reasonably functional banking system. For most of what we want to do internationally, at least commercially or with trading partners able to work with approved banks, things work pretty OK. There is a substantial part of the world that doesn't live under these conditions.