Bitcoin (according to its website) claims to provide instant P2P transactions and very low processing fees. International bank transactions take days or weeks and have very high fees.
But even more importantly, bitcoins do not require a bank account. All it requires is internet or text messaging access. This is very important for the developing world where many people do not have bank accounts.
Not really. I mean, I'm sure they can if you're moving millions, but small transactions are pretty much instant, even internationally, at least between modern banks in 2 countries. And the fees (if there even are any) are negligible.
Anyhow, that's my experience with my bank. I do know that American banks can be behind the times a bit...
Fees are not negligible at all: Sending 200 pounds from the UK to US costs an average of 20 pounds or 10% according to https://transferwise.com/transfer-money-to-the-usa.
> If someone only has a phone, they need to store their bitcoin somewhere, and its unlikely to be their phone.
Why? Bitcoins do not exist somewhere, bitcoin transactions do, and they are stored in the blockchain. Bitcoins that you own are essentially unspent transactions to your address which is only a few bytes long.
A bitcoin wallet/address is not a bank account by any sense of the world.
I would sure hate to loose all my money because it rained hard while walking home. And all the other dangers that haunt phones.
A counter here of they should be backing up is unacceptable. Many people who are otherwise very knowledgeable don't make backups.
Sure, if they have all their money under a mattress then they are venerable to house fire, theft, and the like. But storing all their money on a cheaply made but affordable electronic device has the same problems, while opening up a ton more possibilities of chronic money loss.
What you need is to hold your private key. You could, for example, holds your private key somewhere else, and inject that private key to your phone when you need to use it.
All the bitcoin stores/processors I have used require 3 or more "confirmations" with each confirmation taking an average of 8 minutes which means each purchase takes at least 24 minutes and sometimes even several hours.
When I tried to sell things with bitcoin, customers told me it was a hassle when a Paypal or credit card transaction completes in seconds. This is the main unfixable problem with bitcoin and that is why I believe it will not take off.