Yeah, it seems like crypto offers less privacy to me, unless that crypto exchange/wallet/idk thingy that would pay businesses for you in exchange for crypto is legit.

Yes, also the ledger is immutable so maybe they can't identify your wallet now but maybe in ten years they can. There's a whole industry around data mining the blockchain and a lot of people who thought they got away with shady stuff in the early days have been caught that way.

Most cryptos are public. Monero specifically though cryptographically obfuscates sender, receiver, and amount.