That's an improvement over the existing system. I don't have to trust anyone in between to get my money to him.
How would that be as possible and as "trustless" without blockchain?
Right now Coinbase is charging me $59 to buy 1 BTC, and I don't know how much more it would be to sell exchange that back to JPY.
You can send $4000 (about 1 BTC) to someone in Japan for $30.14 with TransferWise.
And guess what? Last time I had to send money to my family in Europe, that's exactly what I did.
2. Regarding trust:
> don't have to trust anyone in between to get my money to him.
Yes you do. Both your friend and you need to trust your Bitcoin exchange. Which sometimes, cannot be trusted. Remember Mt Gox?
a. If you do not currently own Bitcoin and want to own it there are many ways you can get it. They range from fast (generally more expensive) to slow (generally less expensive). Sure, if you want to buy Bitcoin on Coinbase you can do that and you will pay them a fee for that service - which I've done. You can also mine it - which I've done, be paid it in - also done, etc.
b. Secondly you are assuming that my friend can't pay for services in Bitcoin. We have both had lunch together at a restaurant in which we paid for the entire meal in BTC.
So it's an unfair statement to say my transferring of BTC to my friend costs me these fees. If you want to make the statement of "transferring USD to BTC to my friend to JPY" then sure, your statement about fees is relevant. I'm not sure suggesting that a pure BTC transfer is not an "accurate comparison" is fair.
2. See the above point. There is no trust beyond math when it come to a pure Bitcoin to Bitcoin transfer. There are plenty of things that you can buy using pure Bitcoin which I, and many of my friends, have done.
1b. Effectively nobody accepts bitcoin. It's something like 3 major merchants and around a couple thousand total, world-wide. So yes, you will be buying BTC for real money and exchanging it for real money on the other side. Pretending we live in a land of hyperbitcoinization isn't helpful.
Further, you incur huge forex risk in between the time it takes to buy, transfer and re-sell. Do it at the wrong time and you could lose tens of percentage points. The parent post understates the cost as a result.
2. Drugs.
Doesn't TransferWise rely on MasterCard? In other words, if MasterCard bans you then you wouldn't be able to send it.
You can send money to Japan using moneygram, or transferwise, or a number of other services for a lower all in cost.
At some point, miners aren't going to be paying for themselves by inflating the monetary supply, and then the cost of what they are doing is going to rise to be more than a centralised database tracking everything. Because the mining process for bitcoin is so expensive relative to updating a database controlled by trusted entities, ie, banks. And that will manifest in transaction fees.
I think that's what makes Lightning Network very exciting. I've used it a few times, and it's a very pleasant experience although definitely still early - only has a capacity of about 3 million at the moment.
I've paid for a lot of services in Bitcoin and been paid in Bitcoin. It's generally been a very smooth and enjoyable process.