How is it superior to something like Western Union? Fewer fees?

It also works in emergencies, when other means are not available - which is a questionable thing, but crypto had allowed me to buy a plane ticket for my wife to leave Russia after the war had started.

The transfer itself is very simple. You put in the target address, calculate the amount and submit. The awesome thing here is that it is much, much faster than any international bank transfer. With Ethereum you are looking at minutes and Bitcoin should still be under two hours.

Of course this assumes that both parties already have wallets set up and have a way to get money in and out. Everyone I've interacted with already had wallets and were also eager to keep it in crypto which made everything even simpler. Using this to send money to my parents would be a complete nightmare though. On the other hand, setting up a Coinbase account while screen sharing might work and be ok if they pull the money out anyways...

When the currency is crashing down like that, people try to discard it by bying something else (goods or other currencies). As I get it, exchanges were limited, so those who had better access to foreign currencies used this as an opportunity and provided services to those who weren't.

Public money -> Venture Capitalist extracting fees -> FinTech startup middleman extracting fees -> Individual sheltering volatile currency

Public money loses everyone else wins. Wealth inequality expands.