I think crypto lead in 99% of cases just to bad actors and use-cases, I still have to encounter one real success story of someone using crypto successfully long-term or to pay for legit, legal stuff where a different method was not allowed due to unfair restrictions.

I think one of the primary motivations for cryptocurrency was that legal ≠ moral. Therefore, I think cryptocurrency's best use cases are all explicitly illegal.

For example, you can donate to Sci-Hub with cryptocurrency. Sci-Hub has an ideological mission which is widely supported, but it runs afoul of copyright law and is illegal in nearly every country and sanctioned in many. You cannot donate to Sci-Hub with fiat currency.

Unfortunately, I agree that in practice >99% of cryptocurrency's use is for scams.

it's a pretty good tool if you need a ransom payment after you hack a hospital

I have read of Venezuelans using it as a safe harbor against their currency instability.

That seems valuable, but I’m not sure how much truth there is to a story I read on the internet.

Sending stablecoins is much cheaper and faster than sending a wire, and that requires Ethereum (or similar chain).

Of course, the bottleneck then becomes converting stablecoin dollars to real dollars.

In the end, maybe that friction is actually a net positive for safety.

it is honestly just a much better UX for transferring large sums of money, something that seems impossible in the US afaict