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Comment by djhworld | Hacker News Reader

> Think about this: banks are CLOSED 77% of the time! Need to send a wire? 3/4 times bank will be closed

Physical branches, sure, but I don't know of any online service that has ever closed, in the UK at least...

We can send payments to other banks and they arrive almost instantly (or within 2 hours) any day of the week. For free.

This is why I wasn't that impressed when US friends were excited about instant transactions using BTC, when we've had this in our banking system for over a decade

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And with companies like Wise (previously trasnferwise) I can convert a USD balance into GBP in seconds, and then withdraw to a UK bank in a few more seconds.

Send money to chile and wise charges 5-8%. They mostly only good in OECD countries. Plus they don't support sending money out of hundreds of countries.

I figured that they changed their name to wise as their transfer business was not profitable in anticipation of their ipo.

People who don't get crypto typically live in countries with not corrupt or inept government officials.

I don’t believe conversion from fiat in home country + transfer fees + conversion to fiat again in Chile costs less than 5-8% except for very large transfers.

That's not true everywhere. My transferwise from EU to Asia takes a good week to arrive and still costs more than Bitcoin and significantly more than any altcoin or lightning network.

Where are you importing to?! To Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia I’ve never had anything take more than 24hrs

Fixing these issues on a per-country basis is most likely easier than the necessary adoption for crypto to replace these mechanisms altogether.

I get what the GGGP's point is, but the baseline to compare with is the EU IBAN system, not the US banking system.

Right, but with Bitcoin, it can be achieved without having government totally (and arguably quite invasively) integrated into every facet of our society.

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