Same for friends living in high inflation LatAm countries - crypto stablecoins are a way to escape rampant inflation
Even the volatility of BTC really doesn't seem like a dealbreaker when you've seen your country's own currency lose 50% of its value in a year.
They want cryptocurrency because it helps them avoid taxes and trading fees.
In a lot of these places, things like Paypal don’t work. So you have to send wires. You get an awful exchange rate + fees for sending it. And they get an even worse exchange rate when receiving it
You easily lose 5-10% spread for every payment
And the “avoid taxes” part is, again, heavily western biased where for all their ills, the governments actually work for the people. I say as someone from a third world country - taxes are largely siphoned off by politicians and bureaucrats. Everything from public schools and hospitals and roads are unusable. Avoiding taxes is perfectly morally correct if all it does is feed an oppressive machine
My best idea, that probably gives governments too much credit, is that it's pretty useful to have a transparent record of illicit money flows, and that you can be OK with a bit of crime to get it.
Governments are huge and consists of many different institutions. I guess many would like to see Bitcoin stopped, but how to do that without fondling with the basic human rights, such as the right to free communication? So far the governments have been regulating it, trying to reduce the illicit use, which doesn't really stop it but actually makes it more legitimate.
Most bitcoin users aren't storing illicit assets. They're hedging against the state doing something absurd.