Why banks charge fees

Except you don't have to leave traditional banking for Bitcoin, or the block chain in general. Join a credit union. Our small business accounts accrue zero fees, my personal accounts have zero fees. I talk to someone who literally lives in my city (well lives in the city I used to) when I call the support number.

They form an alliance with other credit unions and they are all zero fee. I go to a credit union ATM near my house to do any banking I can't do on the phone app (deposit checks > $5k). I can use the ATMs in any 7-11 for free and even deposit cash. In a way it's like Simple in that I haven't stepped foot in a branch since opening the account. Even to finish loan papers.

One thing that Chase did better than my credit union is international wire transfers. They charge less and I am able to do them via web interface instead of calling the branch every time. It's actually kind of a pain and I'm thinking about looking into something to work around this.

In 8 years my credit union has never screwed up, continued to add benefits to my card, gives me a free FICO credit check and score every month, and approved me for a $60k auto loan from the app on my phone instantly. Their loan rates are nearly universally 1-2% lower than the commercial banks and the crap the auto dealers push, except for when they do 0%.

They also shy away from making bad loans. The mortgage crisis barely touched them. You want a jumbo loan? You better have some damn good credit. It was the fact that during the housing crisis they were barely touched that I changed from Chase to them as I wanted to work with a bank that practiced good lending practices and didn't need to make shareholders happy every three months.