One of the big upsides I see to Bitcoin is the borderlessness of it. Where I live, we already have free same-day wire transfers we can initiate from internet/mobile banking, and services supported by all the big banks for cheap (15 cents fixed fee) instant transfers using cell phone numbers as recipients. I think most countries have similar services. But as soon as you cross a border, suddenly everything has 10x greater fees, you run into anti-terrorism/anti-money laundering regulation snags, and so on.