Nice writeup. I’m glad to see other people see how poorly banking serving people on the whole.

David Bailey below is not correct. I travel often, and yes, withdrawal limits and fees, ATM charges and exchange fees are common no matter which country you go into, it’s simple a matter of scale. It may not cost 80 dollars to get money out in Canada as an American traveler, but it sure isn’t free or cheap. Further, since the fees alone (never mind bank fees or exchange fees) are 3–5 dollars, people tend to take out more money than they need to reduce the impact of the fees.

Meanwhile, bitcoin fees are currently around a dollar, it doesnt matter how much you send, and it’s instant (relative to banks). And bitcoin is the most expensive one! Bitcoin suffers from other drawbacks. It’s relatively slow (lightning fast compared to banks, slow compared to other cryptos), mining is dominated by a few areas, and other issues having to do with user experience, propaganda, distrust of the system, and distrust by users of themselves no to screw up using the system. But the biggest issue of them all is that while it’s a global currency, it’s not accepted globally as currency (for many of the reasons listed above, but also, regulatory and tax reasons)

I don’t think the adoption you are hoping for is going to come from the top down. A government just switching over to bitcoin or any non-federalized crypto will never, ever happen. What incentive would a government have to do that? This is one tool by which they exert control. It would be an insane move to do that. this is another case, where what is clearly better for people in general will not be done, because it decays the power structures in place.

However, change must happen, and it can. But it needs to come from the bottom up. It won’t be Rich America, or Rich europe. Their financial systems suffice (they aren’t great or fair, they suffice), as David below is indicating.

But for almost 30% of the world, banking is not working, at all. Distrust in the government, in the banking system, in western influences, (all deserved) etc etc. cause disuse of banking, thus making it so the economic foundations can not be built. This is where crypto can help first, now.

That is why Bitcoin is not the currency of the future (where I agree with David below). It is not intended to help these people. However other projects like Dash and Divi are. Divi in particular, they are focusing one one single aspect of crypto: Making Crypto Easy for everyone. This started by simple ease of use methods. But now it has expanded into banking. They bought a bank. Now, using the extremely low cost of their crypto they can perform remittances in 200 countries. And they can do this at the speed and cost of crypto. Now anyone in the world can have a bank account, regardless of what country they are in, and they can move money with SMS.

The future is going to be great, we just arent there yet.