[anonymoushn]

(it recently cost me $3 to transfer $1000 internal to the Bitcoin system as an experiment)

If you were to instead use a credit card or a wire transfer, someone (not necessarily you) would almost certainly be charged between 5 and 15 times as much for the transaction.

[antiscam]

And with a check or an American-style ACH payment (or British-style BACS payment), nothing at all. And both ACH and BACS provide many more services and essentially no practical downsides compared to Bitcoin. (Most people go through life never needing to make a payment anonymously.)

The thing is, people on the Bitcoin forums talk as if they have no idea how to set up a decent bank account. It's not hard. I do a substantial amount of banking and can't remember the last time I paid a bank fee. (Obviously you're correct that merchants do pay credit-card fees and thus that some of the prices I pay are affected by merchant fees, but I get services for that too.)