To people who say "we are still early" what makes you say so?

Do you see real potential use cases for crypto or you simply say it because crypto is owned by less than 5% of the world's population? Just because something is owned by a minority of people, doesn't mean it's destined to succeed. You can use many examples for that.

The problem is, if crypto was to reach mass adoption, it would need actual, practical use cases while in reality most coins don't have any utility. I'm not just talking about Shiba Inu, but also serious projects like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Payments: they exist but on a very small scale. Doesn't justify a trillion dollar industry though. Bitcoin is used by people to buy drugs and other illegal things on the dark web, but besides that the adaption is almost nonexistent.

Cross-border transfers: they also exist only on a small scale. And when people are done with the transfer, they normally convert their crypto to fiat.

Smart contracts: who actually uses these? I've looked at most blockchains, and they are used to create other tokens and NFTs but nothing that really connects with the real world.

Defi: loans are over-collateralized, which makes them pointless in most situations. Cryptocurrencies aren't suitable for long-term loans (for example, mortgages) since the value fluctuates so much, which is why regular people and companies aren't interested in using defi.

Most of the times it looks like crypto is a solution looking for a problem. It looks like a huge cash grab and no one genuinely has any idea if crypto will ever have real large scale adaption.