It’s a great platform for being able to transfer money that would otherwise be under sanctions and for storing criminal profits. And that’s probably what it will always be for.
It’s traceable but also possible to hide your identity, especially if you are a major criminal or government under sanctions. Especially when compared to the traditional finance system (in which they also tend to be pretty good at hiding their identities and transactions).
You can hide your identity on Monero, not so much on Bitcoin. BTC either gets linked to a series of identities, or is freshly mined, both of which can be allowed or denied by exchanges via law enforcement.
In the traditional finance system, hiding relies on bribery, mules, and straight up hacking. Those are common to both systems, and law enforcement knows how to deal with them.