Venmo is great for small payments, and makes way more sense than bitcoin for that use case.
Bitcoin's use-case is not microtransactions or payments among friends. It is providing secure and trustworthy payments when no trusted third party exists, independent of governments, companies, etc.
I am amazed how many people use Venmo. I'm one of the first adopters, I've never actually used it except to donate the penny I was given when I opened my account, but I see such a diverse crowd using it today daily - it's beyond my most optimistic expectations for it or a similar service! So, PayPal did a great decision to acquire them as Venmo doesn't have the notoriety of PayPal proper!
Bitcoin's use-case is not microtransactions or payments among friends. It is providing secure and trustworthy payments when no trusted third party exists, independent of governments, companies, etc.