My crypto currency skepticism maintained

From an article in SMH:

The surge in bitcoin's value, which started all of this, comes despite the fact that bitcoin's underlying utility remains debatable. While it has been used as a form of payment in some investment deals, relatively few merchants who sell things to consumers in the real world accept it.

There is little doubt blockchain – which is being used by the big banks, the ASX and others to speed up and reduce friction in transactions – is a big innovation. But no one has been able to explain what any crypto-currency using it actually achieves. If you aren't engaged in secret cross-border transactions, normal money still seems to work.

As people who are better versed in this world than me have said, bitcoin still looks like a solution in need of a problem. And if the biggest crypto-currency of them all still has this question hanging over it, then what does it say for the rest of them?