Why are cryptocurrencies so much better than fiat currencies?

They're not.
At least for the moment.

Privacy and censorship resistance if you want it (Monero - maybe it gets banned, who knows?). If you told your parents two decades ago that you'd happily give up your cash and your privacy for heavily monitored digital fiat, they would have thought you were an absolute spanner. Each generation further back would have thought much less of you as they lived closer to a time of foreign state control and war.
Nowadays the same parents and their children have fallen for the "If you've got nothing to hide..." argument. If it wasn't so sad it'd be funny, but privacy used to be considered a valuable right.

Programmable (primarily Ethereum) which means conditional contracts can be written to automate backroom tasks - this is what the businesses in the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance are most interested in and what I'd see as the most probable ubiquitous use for cryptos in the future, but the network needs to scale. There will be tasks within organisations where permissioned is "good enough" for the time being, but having a massively distributed network comprised of a thousand smaller networks (and so on) will lead to an economy of scale that reduces the cost below hosting your own permissioned network either within your own business or as part of a consortium, with privacy features being built out so your company's dealings or details aren't being publicised to the world unless you want them to be.

Sonny noggs wrote: »

Easier to manipulate and easier to make money from speculation?

This is the primary use right now.

At the moment it's a glorified pyramid scheme, whereas in the past you only had access to those in your locality crypto gives you worldwide access to suckers for the pump and dump.

Blockchain is the future and cryptocurrency as a decentralized form of currency makes perfect sense but as it stands it's just a flurry of people trying to get rich quick.

mr_fegelien wrote: »

No, I'm just learning. I've failed the LC and now I want to take the initiative to learn as much about finance and economics as I'll be doing a similar PLC course.

Blockchain should at most be an "oh that's cute" hobby in that case. Accounting firms & companies around the world are still studying, building and testing it themselves alongside the open source development. If it turns out you have a real interest in it you might be able to swing a thesis about it once you're at that stage but right now it's early days. You should focus more on the standards of finance than distracting yourself with a tool designed to automate jobs or contracts.

The Big Four certainly have interest in it but they're more likely to want capable programmers than researchers whose job it would be to create to-do lists and/or what-if lists for the software architects to ruminate on & design, then hand over to the devs to code and test.