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Comment by scalesolved | Hacker News Reader

Whilst there is a lot of hype and speculation I think you are mistaken about there being no real-world applicability. My bank has so many fees and loopholes for sending money even within the EU and they can take days.

I owed a friend some money and I sent him BTC which arrived in a couple of hours with fees that were about 10% of what I pay using the banking system. Real-world applicability and a satisfied user.

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1) I don't what bank you're using but it's really bad

2) It's been a LONG time since we can transfer money really fast at a really low cost

really? what can you use to transfer money from the US to the Philippines "really fast at a really low cost"?

>>2) It's been a LONG time since we can transfer money really fast at a really low cost

Transferring money from many places in the world is not cheap or easy (think of third world countries) - but even in more developed countries it can take quite long and have heavy fees. Crypto enables people to be their own bank.

I transferred nearly 1000€ worth of BTC yesterday and it took one hour and cost cents.

With the new SEPA instant a transfer takes 10 sec max [1]

[1] https://www.europeanpaymentscouncil.eu/what-we-do/sepa-insta...

> so many fees and loopholes for sending money even within the EU

Get yourself a bank which does SEPA properly.

Easier said than done at least in Spain. Poor opening hours and poor customer service. It's one of the reasons I'm a fan of crypto for the ease of transferring.

But the issue is lack of competition, not something that can only be solved by crypto currency. The original statement was that crypto is still looking for an actual problem to solve. Lack of competition and slow transfers isn't something related to crypto. Meaning, at a point Bitcoin took hours to work as well which a really high fee. SEPA apparently is 1 EUR and 10 seconds.

Ease of transferring seems dubious as well, crypto can also be slow or quick.

These are fair points, my reply was to the OP who said crypto was 100% hype and speculation which I didn't agree with. I'm giving a data point of crypto being useful for me, yes BTC has been slow at points but I've also had with each bank I've ever used (Natwest/Santander/Banco Sabadell/Barclays) points where my accounts were under maintenance and couldn't be moved.

  But the issue is lack of competition

And cryptos brings competition back in the financial space

Probably because historically banking licences where handed out to those sympathetic to the Franco regime.

Well, with BTC you don't need a bank at all.

In the EURO Zone, SEPA transfers worked really well for me so far: - SEPA fee is less than 1 EURO, regardless of the volume (e.g. with UBS, but some banks might rip you off) - it takes at most 2 banking days, but half of the payments made before the bank day opening, are transferred during the current day in my experience

SEPA is completely free (as a customer), in my experience.

In the Eurozone, SEPA transfers are free. Outside Eurozone, but within EU, there are typically small fees.

SEPA is made free by a law, not by good technical design. It means it is not free because the banks would like to charge us and can't, so maybe the whole bank account fees are superior in some way we can't see.

It's the same with the EU law for mobile roaming data. It looks like laws made for the riches cosmopolitan against the poor that don't travel much in Europe

Those problems are not technical though. Centralized systems using banks are more efficient in theory. It's just databases talking to each other, there is no technical reason why transfers can't be near instantaneous and basically free. Cryptocurrencies might provide incentives for banks to lower their fees and polish their crusty legacy code, but I can't see them displacing banks for everyday use.

Good point but crypto are not only new payment system but also new currencies... No more helicopter money

Within the EU and EFTA, SEPA transfers are free.

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