I don't buy this framing for a second. Crypto is popular, I mean actually popular amongst most people on the ground, only because the price keeps going up; with the implicit promise that it will keep going up. Everything else is creative story telling. On-paper benefits are trotted out only to post-hoc explain the growth (which is mostly there from pumping and people seeing past growth) and to pump the coin further. "Decentralized" is only as important as it keeps the "this is still crypto right?" identity in lay-peoples minds that is tied to magic money out of nowhere. Otherwise it can be weakened arbitrarily.