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Banks are good if you live in a functional democratic country with sane politics.

If you don't then you'll easily get the bad side of it since abusing the power is not that hard.

How is paypal / venmo / cashapp different?

you can sue them

modulo all the ToS / arbitration clauses, that is still the fundamental difference

and although not a recourse available to most people, still not nothing

KYC

Good luck taking legal action against an off shore entity, especially when the legal fees is more than the money transferred, and the money most likely moved to three different accounts in as many countries from that first off shore account.

You’re right that you don’t have guaranteed recourse for foreign fraud. But at least the banks play whack-a-mole and make it somewhat expensive for criminals to set up accounts; crypto undoubtedly makes money laundering substantially easier and cheaper.