That is daft. The article looks at fees at exchanges and considers this as friction. Is this friction due to fiat or bitcoin?
When people look at bitcoin transfers (in lieu of goods/services), rather than exchanging bitcoin for fiat, they will realize that this 'friction' more or less disappears.
If there were no frictions in the bitcoin economy, an arbitrageur would be able to make a profit on the difference in the bitcoin price at several exchanges, claim Alexander Kroeger, a research analyst in the Bank’s Research and Statistics Group, and Asani Sarkar, assistant vice president of the Bank’s Integrated Policy Analysis Group.
However, this does not happen, although BTC-E exchange shows a constantly lower price for bitcoin than Bitstamp or Bitfinex (the average difference is about 2% of the BTC-E price). The reason why making money on this difference is impossible is that all the three exchanges charge considerable fees for transactions and for depositing/withdrawing of traditional fiat currencies.
