Payments may very well be held back by regulation. But because crypto currencies are essentially permissionless protocols, they can kind of just…ignore all of that, which makes them useful but also of dubious legality. And it definitely results in adverse selection because then of course people who want to avoid the regular banking/payment system will use the next best thing available.

Still, it’s utility, even if it’s grey market (of course it can be used for black market stuff, but it’s a protocol agnostic of that). For me I have purchased legal stuff with crypto that regular payment processors had essentially banned, so crypto was actually a better option than alternatives like e-check.