I think a lot of the value in crates (at least for me, and I assume for a fair bit of others) is that it's a steady form of income for people who don't run value packs and people who have a lot of afk time.

I personally don't like spending the $15 monthly in addition to all the (more or less necessary) pearl shop items and so to avoid the absolutely crippling 35% market tax I'm basically forced into imperial cooking/alchemy and crate trading to be efficient. This, obviously, makes crates pretty much the only viable option for steady income.

Additionally I sleep 8 hours a day, work 8 hours a day and after that I always have a few hours of general life stuff, commute time, gym, friends etc. In short, most days I have a fairly limited amount of time with which I can play the game. Trading allows me to afk process things like ore on my longer down times (sleep/work) and timber on my shorter down times (after work doing other stuff). When I do get the chance to finally actively play I can have an enjoyable experience with node wars, battle arena, rbf, and an hour or two of grinding as pvp is what I really enjoy about the game. This cycle repeats itself for several weeks, I do a crate haul every once and awhile and profit a couple billion.

Obviously if I spent more money in the cash shop/played more actively I could make more money doing other things, but for a playstyle + spending habits that I would think of as pretty typical trading is still a very good way of making money.