My experience:
There's a high level of security. Crypto currencies are not always affected by inflation in the market and very volatile in nature. The convenience of trading at anytime and the easy made of crypto currency liquidity across multiple exchanges. There's equality and fairness on either sides of the market. It's always a win-win situation whether you're buying or selling if you know what you're doing. And there's also a high level of transaction freedom.
Please feel free to share your experiences with Bitcoin and other Crypto currency
Like you pointed out, there is freedom in trading. You are not restricted to a specific time-frame due to no regulation in the trading market by the government. While there may be some whales that can relatively manipulate the price, it is not as worst in trading where giant conglomerates hold like 51% of a respective stock which can lead to inside trading.
Personally, BTC has created an opportunity for me to work online. I never imagined seeing myself working online and receiving this amount of BTCs weekly due to campaign signatures. While this kind of visioned is too specific, it significantly helped me and my family in alleviating our expenses weekly.