[Mickydtron]

In order for it to be a legitimate alternative, as opposed to only being of interest to ideologues and academics, shouldn't it actually be competitive with existing technologies in areas like fees, user experience, or speed? If it was better at some and worse at others, it would provide a legitimate alternative with a different set of trade-offs, but for it to lose in every category doesn't really make it seem like it can be an alternative to the centralized banking system in a real and useful way.

[andirk]

As Satoshi's whitepaper harps on, and, in my opinion, the biggest difference between fiat and BTC is that BTC doesn't answer to a government. That may have a premium or a discount attached to it. But if that's not an attractive reason for someone to use BTC, then yeah, we need to look at fees like you are talking about.

[aianus]

It doesn't lose in every category, OP just chose a specific situation in which it was very expensive and then wrote a blog post showcasing his poor planning.

As a counter-anecdote I saved hundreds of dollars transferring USD10,000 in the US to THB cash in Thailand via Bitcoin.

[coryfklein]

It is competitive in fees. Sending $1M of bitcoin can be done for less than a dollar. Try doing that with USD.

Of course, fees for converting USD -> BTC -> USD are not that cheap, but neither are the fees for converting USD -> YEN -> USD.