uber was not perfectly legal in all jurisdictions at all times. I would guess they were operating illegally in almost every jurisdiction when they began operating there. They in fact had teams dedicated to illegal activities in specific regions. There's an article about that here by Mike Isaac who also wrote a pretty good book about Uber: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/technology/uber-greyball-...

It seems like if we ought to be waiting for the state to fix payment processors, we should also be waiting for them to fix taxis, instead of operating illegal "ride share" apps.

My argument isn't about Bitcoin because Bitcoin isn't a technology that provides cheap settlement of dollars. Other technologies do though, and they additionally avoid the need to pay e.g. 3.6% (!!) to Stripe, which seems like it makes them worthwhile on its own.