I affectionally call it crypto-babble.

> critics describe what it does better than its advocates

Seems to be true of pretty much all crypto. Most of the advocates have a very poor understanding of how it works, what the benefits/tradeoffs are and worst of all a complete ignorance of the systems they are seeking to "replace".

As a result we see all the crypto stuff simply repeat mistakes/failures/weaknesses that have been known in financial systems for around a century or more in most cases.