[icebraining]

No, in terms of the overall cost of operation of the system, bitcoin is most definitely not cheaper. Transaction costs paid by the users are low because of the inflation subsidy paid out to the miners.

Now compare that to the subsidies in the form of bailouts to banks, and we'll see what's cheaper.

Yes, I'm being facetious, but my point is that if you want to include such costs on one side, you must do the same on the other.

[wsxcde]

Should we also then count the amount of money that are lost to bitcoins being stolen due to malware, poorly written private key generators, exit scams and so forth?

I think what I did was a fair comparison.