Why is Crypto so hard to use?

It starts with confusing basic terminology for trivial usage (e.g. 'signing' and 'address'), proceeds to get worse from there. A 'wallet' is described as hot/cold and hardware/software and single/multi-sig. How do you easily support both 'mainnet' (actual live) and 'testnets' (essentially your fantasy league). You'll need to 'import the contract address' for a lot of coins in order to see your 'stake' (aka balance) in the wallet.

On the merchant side, the technological workarounds to higher transaction fees and slower processing time versus traditional credit cards lead to 'L2' aka 'layer-2', sometimes 'on-/off-chain' solutions. And finally the mathematical and network security issues are usually hidden deeply and covered in double-speak to the most critical question - where is the key to your wallet? Hint: it's not the secret phrase...

I've seen a meme recently that said.

Crypto. Everything you don't know about computers with everything you don't know about money.

The easy answer would be to compare it to the first video games right? It gets better over time.

I think the right answer is that the space is so early, it's risky for established, great UX people to drop their comfy salary at an established company to work on a decentralized exchange. Once the incentives align better, the products will get better.

My hope is that in 5 years time the UX will be so good, we'll be able to get loans, provide LP and borrow against a variety of assets with our eyes closed.

Do you mean the websites or the experience of using crypto?

The first can be resolved, I'm not sure the second can.

In order to compete with existing payment methods, they would have to give up the "be your own bank" ethos. (i.e. custodial wallets will be required to match existing UX of credit cards and pay apps)

It’s being build by passionated programmers who suck at design. Compare it to the web in 1997 and now. The designers and decent UX will come.