Venmo, cashapp, and PayPal all have geographic restrictions (only one of those works where I live), and also pretty shit reputations - PayPal routinely just dicks its users and freezes their funds indefinitely.

Crypto doesn't give a shit about borders, there's no intermediary who can freeze your assets (unless you decide to leave them on am exchange), etc.

This is not a new feature of crypto.

It's ignorance.

You can easily do that with other tech.

Crypto right now is just to new to have been properly regulated yet.

And while you are true that you can run your own wallet, you are depending on the decentralized network, you do need a certain amount of stabity and you need to make sure you can recover and keep your wallet.

Enough people demonstrated at least with the last point and millions lost in locked away wallets that there are still fundamental problems.

You cannot easily make payments to or from certain places, or based on certain activities, with the dominant payment technologies.

Yes, this is due to regulations, but it's also due to the centralized nature of the technology which requires permission to use.

Even when more regulation is forced onto cryptocurrencies, the architecture will always be permissionless, as it's a decentralized network. That is a fundamental difference.

You can't do that with crypto either.

Because you actually need to convert your Fiat into crypto first.

The current limitations are real and the theoretical possibility is equally good of what currently exist: a black market.

In Iran everyone took euros or exchanged them on the spot. Even when the currency shop was closed people were waiting outside for us