Equities are not (marketed as) a USD alternative? This is a bad faith argument.

Disagree. Equities, specifically index funds, are marketed as an asset that will increase in USD price over time. There is an entire movement founded on this belief (FIRE).

Well yes, but that's because of profit from the capital they represent. Bitcoin is not a means of production.

They are marketed as a savings account / CD alternative..

Even special cases like Venezuela where people are fleeing from hyperinflation, they mostly benefiting from the exposure to the USD. The only benefit is evading capital controls and price is irrelevant for that usecase.

Capital controls (blocking foreign exchange) are stupid because for every person selling a hyperinflationary currency, there is someone on the other side paying with a stable currency who is partially relieving some of the inflation pressure.

There are Venezuelans in Miami that send their paychecks back home to support the local economy yet capital controls prevent something like this from happening.

Capital controls, evading economic sanctions, as well as draconian KYC/AML measures that for Venezuelans can be very difficult to fulfill as you're asked for things like existing bank accounts (there's only a tiny handful of international banks that allow Venezuelans to open accounts with them at the moment) or a valid passport (can go upwards to hundreds of dollars and with waiting times in months and sometimes years) not to mention the chance you're just silently dropped only because you are Venezuelan. True, having USD would be vastly preferred for most, but it's just plainly not possible in some cases as local cash supply is very restricted and risky.

Just because most people in first world countries only see cryptocurrencies as speculative toys it doesn't mean they're without uses for the rest of the world, even if those uses can be seen as immoral or against the spirit of the law from a western point of view.