Monkeytrots: "Well, without an 'exchange', crypto is useless."
No, it's not. It's fundamentally the same risk as if you bought or sold anything else for cash.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-to-buy-or-sell-bitcoin-without-using-a-centralized-crypto-exchange
Just so you don't get hung up on what is, and isn't an "exchange", read to the bottom: Offline PtoP exchanges.
Now, admittedly, I wouldn't want to be doing this with very large transactions -- but I wouldn't want to be doing super large cash transactions, either.