If your only goal is to send digital value across the planet why would anyone use Ethereum or Bitcoin? There are a ton of alternatives that cost fractions of a penny in transaction fees.
Large cryptocurrencies have more liquidity, meaning it's less likely you'll get large price differences between exchanges in difference countries, and more likely that any given exchange will support trading in that digital currency. For large trades, more liquidity also means less price slippage upon buying or selling the cryptocurrency.
What services are the best for transferring large sums of money cheaply, safely, and quickly? In my experience, you can only choose one. I would prefer to chose two: cheaply and safely. I am not as worried about time. Recommendations?
Which kind of bank transfer are you talking about? A few days ago I got paid through ACH transfer and the transaction took 2 business days to execute, albeit with no transaction fees. Now I'm at the mercy of the bank regarding what I can do with that money.
Compare that with using something like UST (Terra), which took only ~1 minute with a fixed fee of ~1 UST for a similar transaction. I also have total control over my money.
SEPA (instant) transfers between European banks are, as the name suggests, instant. There are also no transaction fees for the users of these transfers. e.g. all major Belgian banks support SEPA instant, so transfers between KBC <-> BNP Paribas <-> ING etc. are instant.
> Now I'm at the mercy of the bank regarding what I can do with that money.
This is going off-topic, but you are with crypto as well. Unless every merchant you use supports your cryptocurrency, you're going to have to convert it back to fiat.
Internationally, between currencies? The best offer I've found for transferring $200,000 USD to AUD is 0.4% ($800). At scale, that's not exactly cheap. I'm referencing the original parent comment which suggests it's possible for fractions of a penny, as I would love to find this service:
> There are a ton of alternatives that cost fractions of a penny in transaction fees.
Algorand, Avalanche, Solana, Cardano and Terra are all cheap and safe, but like that other guy said. I have no idea what kinds of crypto are listed on foreign exchanges. I'd imagine anything sufficiently popular though.
BCH is essentially the same protocol as Bitcoin (BTC), but possibly safer (in that your transaction is never relegated to a 2nd-layer protocol like Lightning, with private nodes) and much cheaper, so if you are familiar with Bitcoin, you don't have to learn a new system or any funny quirks. And it's pretty universally accepted at every exchange and wallet.
Not saying it is better than the other options presented (and definitely not recommending it as an investment) but BCH does work quite well for transacting.