For the first two questions... just pick a good exchange? You have a lot of options, and chances are high that one supports your preferred payment method.
What's the problem you see with crypto? I think it's a good platform for payments, especially if it's fully anonymous like Monero. And no, I don't care that it's used for scams. It doesn't have to be. Just don't buy shitcoins and you're good.
Go By Example is an amazing resource. Other than that, I recommend you to get out of tutorial hell asap and just start building stuff. If you're going to deal with databases, I really like Gorm.
Fullstack dev here. "Huh?"