[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.