Sure, the banks can lower their rates but knowing the big and slow banks, they will wake up 10 years too late when they've missed the point. Just how it happened with payday/consumer loans. They're now attempting to get into that market but no-one notices. I just made payments within the same country in the EU (Swedish bank), I was charged something like 20 cents, while insignificant, it's not free. SEPA payments are €1 I believe. Europeans still deal with non-Europeans on a regular basis. Small-time work outsourcing is one the rise and most of the workforce is in places like India where banking is still consumer unfriendly and primitive. Besides, the world is quite a lot bigger. In the Philippines there's something like 10 million people abroad sending money back home at least bimonthly. They use Western Union and the likes, which are expensive. Most have state of the art phones and often move money to areas that are somewhat remote. While most people don't need international transfers, a significant portion of the population does. 10% of 7 billion is still 700 million, that's not nothing.
I don't know weither I should be laughing or crying after reading that... Are you really saying that nobody is using it? Here you go: https://bitnodes.earn.com/nodes/live-map/ https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactions.html http://bitcointicker.co/transactions/ Transaction costs are at all time low: https://www.blockchain.com/de/charts/cost-per-transaction Of course there isn't as much volume as in fiat money, but that's not needed to justify an active market. And IF you know what you are doing, there is nothing more convenient that a bitcoin transaction. You exchange public keys via messenger or email, you pay up a couple of cents in fees and depending on how much fees you were willing to pay it's either instant or takes a couple of hours. There is a downside though: If you make a mistake, there is no mommy you can run to and ask for help. Typing error, victim to a phishing attempt, sent the private key instead of the public key...that money is gone forever. Thing is, just because you don't use it or are scared to use it doesn't mean it isn't used for perfectly legal transactions. Just ask the people from 2nd or 3rd world countries like Zimbabwe or Venezuela how much they liked their BTC. Crypto goes a (very) long way if there is no working fiat money system, your government is a fraud or you don't have access to a bank account. All you need is a smartphone. There is still a long way to go when it comes to receiving salary, paying tax or buying a house in crypto. But I'm paying a bunch of sotware services in crypto that are provided to me from India and Russia and I have not had a single problem. Exchanging your 80€ software costs into Rupees and sent it from the EU. 80€ wire, takes a week and costs 20+€ in fees. Crypto: 4cts in fees and takes 2h.
Inland payments in Europe are 100% free of charge. Payments to another country in Europe included Switzerland, Monaco, Icelans, Liechenstein and Norway. Iban and BIC/SWIFT code should be mentioned, and costs should be SHARED. Payment should be in Euro and max 50,000. More then 3billion live on less then 2.50$ a day. They have probably never heard of payments abroad.
BINGO! You just made the case for BTC. ET posters of past and present that thing the USD is going to last, and be stable forever, because we have an aircraft carrier protecting it are living in an alternate reality.
Bitcoins: 4 billion / 24 hours. Most transactions have a value of 0.0... btc. Forex 1,200 billion /24 hours. A mouse makes indeed dust (bitcoin). An elephant makes also dust but a lot more (300 times more, forex).
@schweiz SEPA is pretty efficient, although ACH isn't terrible however its pretty presumptuous to claim blockchain/BTChas no use case in money transfer. The world does not revolve around Europe, global trade is global.
This charts shows the reality. Dollars sent since beginning of this year went down from 55G to less then 5 G. That's roughly a drop of 91% in value sent. Not reality the sign of a success story. it also illustrates that it was pure speculation. If the main traffic would be from business then the volume would not drop 91% because that would mean that business went down 91%. Median transaction value is less then $200 or less then 0.03 BTC, and still in a descending trend. Not really a typical amount for business payments.
You need to reread my post. 1)Because you are trying to extrapolate the future trajectory of the technology on a 1 year chart. And 2)Blockchain != BTC. Suggest you google Ripple.
I don't extrapolate, I explain the behavior of the past. That behavior is real and undeniable. Future nobody knows although the crypto fans apparently can see in future. But the explosion to 50-250K in 2019 did not happen yet. We rather got an implosion. Blockchain technology does not need BTC to survive, and is already used in other applications (insurance, banking and aviation). Can you explain me why the charts are what they are? Why went volume down by 91%? Why is median value only $200? These things show that the story that is been told is fake.