Crypto also doesn't do the first, is beholden to laws and regulations*, is not decentralized, does not cut out middlemen, and is not anonymous (not for regular users at least).
Um, you clearly don't know what you are talking about.
So the first one I slightly overstated, a regular user can use crypto directly, using any of a number of different apps that serve as wallets. Which is I guess a step away, but not really. In contrast, the only way to use SWIFT is to be a bank.
It very much isn't beholden to laws and regulations, because it is decentralized. Now companies doing crypto cannot afford to do completely ignore laws and regulations, but the crypto itself is decentralized and thus difficult to attack.
As for decentralization, that's fundamental to bitcoin, and original to Satoshi's design. This is what made me say you don't know what you are talking about. There is no one you can arrest that will stop bitcoin. That's because it is
decentralized. A block chain doesn't have to be decentralized, but most of the prominent ones are.
As for anonymity, yeah, users are anonymous using the right crypto and right wallet app. That's decently anonymous for practical purposes. For example, zcash will anonymize your spending, and that's just one example.
Everything has "real" financial value in the sense that its worth what someone, somewhere is willing to pay for it.
Crypto is no more really valuable than modern art pieces.
Sorry, meant to say fundamental value here. But what you describe is not what I'm talking about. It's ability to reduce transaction cost and time alone makes it have a frankly phenomenal fundamental value. The original bitcoin network itself, which is slow as hell, can do massive transactions faster than SWIFT. Etherium can do exchanges in 30 seconds, for just one prominent example. SWIFT recently managed to make it so that it takes
only 30 minutes, at least half of the time.
On top of that, the transaction fees are much lower than credit cards, although it is still slower. But with innovation and greater adoption, I expect that as well to shrink as prioritization shifts towards doing payment processing.
NFTs are also a great way to make assets more liquid. I'm not talking about the stupid digital art ones, but the ones that link the NFT with a real world good, like a property deed ownership, intellectual property to something valuable, or other real world non-fungible good. For example, one could sell add slots on a TV show through NFTs, with the holder of the NFT being allowed to submit the ad to be shown on the show.
Ways of doing trade are almost always among the most impactful innovations.