I'm now lost to the appeal. Paying a little less than 50% just to send money? When I started educating myself on cryptocurrency, I was reading a great deal of "how much better than Western Union" it was. I will need to rethink this!

Hi! I'm new on here and to cryptocurrency altogether. Hello!
My question is: I created a coinbase account and received $100 in bitcoin to my wallet. I then sent another user $10 in bitcoin and it withdrew a total of $14.07. I thought it was free to send/receive?