[tom_mellior]

> a single non-illegal use case that isn't better served by a traditional, centralized database

You know how PayPal blocked payments to Wikileaks? (Back when it wasn't yet obviously evil.) That's what traditional, centralized databases can do for you. Note that donations to Wikileaks weren't illegal, governments were just efficient in pressuring PayPal into enforcing rules that didn't even exist officially.

Also, traditional, centralized banks simply do not currently offer me the possibility of near-instantaneous money transfers. (This varies depending on where you live.) Bitcoin does.

There are a lot of things wrong with Bitcoin, the fees are much too high, and yes, its proof-of-work scheme is terribly wasteful. But the view that it doesn't offer anything useful is a bit one-dimensional.

[ForHackernews]

> the possibility of near-instantaneous money transfers.

Maybe the possibility. In actual fact, don't bitcoin transaction confirmations sometimes take >24 hours?

[splintercell]

I can even make a bitcoin tx take more than a month by not attaching any tx fee to it.

Attach a higher fee, and it will get cleared in 10 mins, attach a lower fee, and it would take time.

[ForHackernews]

So that seems...much worse than "legacy" banking solutions.

Here in the UK, I can send an extremely fast (matter of minutes) "faster payment" to any UK account for free, and a pretty-darn-quick (matter of hours) SWIFT transfer to any European account for a very low flat fee.

[tom_mellior]

Sometimes. You can throw money at the problem, but yes, it's a gamble. It should be all that easier for banks to beat this, but they don't.