There are cases where crypto solves a problem better than anything else, but they're pretty niche. I used to live in China. Many of my friends still do, or did

There are cases where crypto solves a problem better than anything else, but they're pretty niche. I used to live in China. Many of my friends still do, or did until recently. China makes it very, very difficult to legally transfer money abroad, even if that money was earned legally and had all required taxes paid on it. It is trivial, though, to buy Bitcoin in China, and trivial to immediately sell it elsewhere. You are not exposed to much risk, because you can execute the transaction quickly, and although you're breaking the law in China, because you're circumventing their capital controls, you're not breaking the law anywhere else — the money was earned legally and all required taxes were paid on it. So Bitcoin is pretty popular as a way to get money out of China if you are not living there any more (or are comfortable with the risk, if you are living there). I imagine there are many other places where it's also useful in this way.