[sillysaurus3]

Except Bitcoin makes it free to send money to friends. One way I could see this being financially viable to build a company around is if lots of people are storing money in the company's webwallet. Then the company could invest customers' money, like a bank. But if you are using a webwallet like Coinbase, then you are asking to get screwed out of your money, since there are no FDIC protections.

[sanswork]

Its free if you have bitcoin and your friend wants bitcoin. Once you bring other currencies into the mix it is often more expensive to comparable services and just as slow if not slower.

[baddox]

> Its free if you have bitcoin and your friend wants bitcoin.

Yes, that goes without saying. It's also true of paying friends with USD cash.

[danbruc]

And it is only free as long as mining new blocks covers the costs of running the network, after that you will have to pay fees.

[awt]

Agreed. Bitcoin is not competitive for small transactions. Given the average transaction confirmation time of 7 minutes (which will never go down) it clearly was not meant to be.

[aianus]

Once the major mining pools receive the transaction, it's very unlikely to be double-spent. If you try to purchase something online from a merchant accepting Bitcoin via Coinbase or Bitpay, you'll notice the transaction completes almost instantaneously.

[rstupek]

Also it's not free for you to get your bitcoin into fiat.