In Europe, bank transfers are free and unlimited for all

[countryfree]

Just a reminder.

From my European bank account, I can make a SEPA transfer to any other European bank account for free. No fee. Nothing to pay. It normally takes one and a half business day so BTC is faster, way faster, but that's not always the case because of the congestion. That used to be exceptional but it's getting the norm. The only way out is a higher fee, which makes BTC less appealing.

Sure, BTC remains the best option for extra-European transfers, and BTC still has the advantage of privacy by being difficult to link to one individual, but all miners and developers shall never forget there's competition out there. Banks, Paypal, Skrill... If BTC wants to be the best, it really needs to be the best.

[HabBear]

Bitcoin I feel is no longer really focused on replacing a dollar, I think it is more of an extremely liquidable settlement device.

I don't think it was ever focused on replacing the dollar. It's meant to be an alternative to government currency. And it absolutely remains a solid alternative to government controlled fiat currency. A solid alternative to government and corporate collusion. The best example is the reduction in trade volume on the three large Chinese exchanges when they colluded to raise transaction fees. That act is the very proof that bitcoin stands and succeeds as an alternative to the dollar and all other government-controlled currency.

[RoommateAgreement]

using bitcoin is not all about the fees!
although it used to be a very nice perk of using bitcoin, but there are still so many other perks such as being your own bank, the privacy and security, and also being able to buy stuff online without giving away all your information like when you use a bank.

p.s. we have free bank transfer here too, it is similar to SEPA but with a different name and it takes up to 2 hours for free.

[jaberwock]

Not every country is Europe. Not every european country is in SEPA zone
You don't how long it will last, with Trump and Brexit and the Muslim invasions the Euro zone may be in future danger.
Banks usually charge fees for services and maintenance of the account, so overall cost probably is higher
You still have no control over your money, it can be taken or frozen or anything.
Open bank accounts is harder than set up a bitcoin address and not everyone can open bank accounts

[Xester]

Just a reminder.

From my European bank account, I can make a SEPA transfer to any other European bank account for free. No fee. Nothing to pay. It normally takes one and a half business day so BTC is faster, way faster, but that's not always the case because of the congestion. That used to be exceptional but it's getting the norm. The only way out is a higher fee, which makes BTC less appealing.

Sure, BTC remains the best option for extra-European transfers, and BTC still has the advantage of privacy by being difficult to link to one individual, but all miners and developers shall never forget there's competition out there. Banks, Paypal, Skrill... If BTC wants to be the best, it really needs to be the best.

I totally agree with it that to be on the top of the competition bitcoin must be the best. And the only way to be the best is for all miners to get a consensus of increasing the blocksize from 1mb to 8mb or more. If it will not be settled then sooner or later even if the price of bitcoin is high many will leave bitcoin due to slow confirmations and it is the start of bitcoins movement towards its end.

[MissGrey]

if you complaining about fees just imagine third world countries where the hourly wage is very very small, but still with the fees bitcoin is the best alternative for those people who don't have access to good banks/monetary system.

[e-coinomist]

Where to begin ... sticking with a chronological order ...

From my European bank account, I can make a SEPA transfer to any other European bank account for free. No fee. Nothing to pay.

Interesting! Which Bank? Living in the middle of this mess myself, center of Europe I would like to inquire.

I don't think it was ever focused on replacing the dollar. It's meant to be an alternative to government currency.

True! Some of the more agressive evangelists are citing this stance, but so far never any currency has replaced another to a far extend. Not even in a failed government scenario where the local currency reached an exchange rate next to beeing utterly worthless.

using bitcoin is not all about the fees!

True again. If I gotta trust mah moneh to a third party first, for them to transfer it to another trusted fourth party that might or might not hand it over to the recipient ... there we got down to the core of peer to peer currency concepts.

I totally agree with it that to be on the top of the competition bitcoin must be the best. And the only way to be the best is for all miners to get a consensus of increasing the blocksize from 1mb to 8mb or more. If it will not be settled then sooner or later even if the price of bitcoin is high many will leave bitcoin due to slow confirmations and it is the start of bitcoins movement towards its end.

So we are in the middle of a Blockchain resizing debate  There is some growing urgend need inside my mind trying to dodge those, just sitting out the matter. Honestly I do not know why we cannot just have bigger blocks right now, as in immediately. We get bigger storage everywhere on a daily basis.

[n0ne]

Just based upon fee, the goodness of the banking along with bitcoin cannot be compared. Bitcoin is an evolution in the technology advancement which has evolved as a payment gateway and soon after this got used in transaction purpose which got the attention of users to make bitcoin the potential alternative to banking and become the best.

[Kemarit]

Just based upon fee, the goodness of the banking along with bitcoin cannot be compared. Bitcoin is an evolution in the technology advancement which has evolved as a payment gateway and soon after this got used in transaction purpose which got the attention of users to make bitcoin the potential alternative to banking and become the best.

Agreed. They even can co-exist with each other. But if bitcoin is
use as an alternative government currency and be embrace globally,
fee's should be minimal to an extend.

As I have said before, bitcoin is used for micro-transactions,
but if there's a huge backlog of transactions and the only
way is to increase the fee's so that your transaction will
be "prioritize, then how can you do online business with that?

[ethereumhunter]

Just a reminder.

From my European bank account, I can make a SEPA transfer to any other European bank account for free. No fee. Nothing to pay. It normally takes one and a half business day so BTC is faster, way faster, but that's not always the case because of the congestion. That used to be exceptional but it's getting the norm. The only way out is a higher fee, which makes BTC less appealing.

Sure, BTC remains the best option for extra-European transfers, and BTC still has the advantage of privacy by being difficult to link to one individual, but all miners and developers shall never forget there's competition out there. Banks, Paypal, Skrill... If BTC wants to be the best, it really needs to be the best.

its good if you can make a transfer for free but how about if you want to make transfer into other country in outside of europe? i don't think its still free because there will be any fee that you should pay and bitcoin is different than any of fiat in the world and bitcoin is giving more benefit than fiat that fiat can not do especially if this is related with fee that we should pay.

[Amph]

you are comparing a finished tool against a non-finished one, bitcoin still don' scale properly, when they activate segwit or hard fork to 2mb or whatever they want to do to address the scalability bitcoin will have proper fee

if you compare it to fiat and the time they need you can actually pay 10k satoshi and be very lucky that it will confirm in one dday, like sepa(actually sepa can take 3 days some time...) so 0.1 cent against free not a big deal for me

[Silberman]

Just a reminder.

From my European bank account, I can make a SEPA transfer to any other European bank account for free. No fee. Nothing to pay. It normally takes one and a half business day so BTC is faster, way faster, but that's not always the case because of the congestion. That used to be exceptional but it's getting the norm. The only way out is a higher fee, which makes BTC less appealing.

Sure, BTC remains the best option for extra-European transfers, and BTC still has the advantage of privacy by being difficult to link to one individual, but all miners and developers shall never forget there's competition out there. Banks, Paypal, Skrill... If BTC wants to be the best, it really needs to be the best.

Good for you but that is not the only benefit bitcoin give to us, the posibility of being your own bank, our funds cannot be frozen, confiscated or getting a haircut, that is another advantage, prepare for those haircuts, they are coming guys.

[vnvizow]

Just a reminder.

From my European bank account, I can make a SEPA transfer to any other European bank account for free. No fee. Nothing to pay. It normally takes one and a half business day so BTC is faster, way faster, but that's not always the case because of the congestion. That used to be exceptional but it's getting the norm. The only way out is a higher fee, which makes BTC less appealing.

Sure, BTC remains the best option for extra-European transfers, and BTC still has the advantage of privacy by being difficult to link to one individual, but all miners and developers shall never forget there's competition out there. Banks, Paypal, Skrill... If BTC wants to be the best, it really needs to be the best.

Good for you but that is not the only benefit bitcoin give to us, the posibility of being your own bank, our funds cannot be frozen, confiscated or getting a haircut, that is another advantage, prepare for those haircuts, they are coming guys.

Well on one hand yes Bitcoin assets can't be frozen, but dayum the price volatility, especially with the current Chinese government scares. I mean which price spike other than halving was not created by people with a destabilizing currency buying in (cyprus, greece, india,etc.)? IMO that's one aspect of btc that other currencies can't compete with.

[disconnectme]

Bitcoin I feel is no longer really focused on replacing a dollar, I think it is more of an extremely liquidable settlement device.

I totally agree with you, the landscape surrounding the initial idea of what BTC should is changing. Now most people see BTC as an asset and not money, also greed and cabal (miners) are manipulating the transaction fee and it is getting higher and higher even when BTC price increases.

[Pursuer]

Just a reminder.

From my European bank account, I can make a SEPA transfer to any other European bank account for free. No fee. Nothing to pay. It normally takes one and a half business day so BTC is faster, way faster, but that's not always the case because of the congestion. That used to be exceptional but it's getting the norm. The only way out is a higher fee, which makes BTC less appealing.

Sure, BTC remains the best option for extra-European transfers, and BTC still has the advantage of privacy by being difficult to link to one individual, but all miners and developers shall never forget there's competition out there. Banks, Paypal, Skrill... If BTC wants to be the best, it really needs to be the best.

Good for you but that is not the only benefit bitcoin give to us, the posibility of being your own bank, our funds cannot be frozen, confiscated or getting a haircut, that is another advantage, prepare for those haircuts, they are coming guys.

Well on one hand yes Bitcoin assets can't be frozen, but dayum the price volatility, especially with the current Chinese government scares. I mean which price spike other than halving was not created by people with a destabilizing currency buying in (cyprus, greece, india,etc.)? IMO that's one aspect of btc that other currencies can't compete with.

this aspect is both a downside and an upside for bitcoin if you ask me.
it is a downside because volatility always means less average Joes can come in and treat bitcoin as a currency like any other currencies out there to buy stuff.
but at the same time since bitcoin has been an investment too, the volatility can be a good thing for the day traders to make money and the more volatile it gets the more profit they can make.

[Juggy777]

Just a reminder.

From my European bank account, I can make a SEPA transfer to any other European bank account for free. No fee. Nothing to pay. It normally takes one and a half business day so BTC is faster, way faster, but that's not always the case because of the congestion. That used to be exceptional but it's getting the norm. The only way out is a higher fee, which makes BTC less appealing.

Sure, BTC remains the best option for extra-European transfers, and BTC still has the advantage of privacy by being difficult to link to one individual, but all miners and developers shall never forget there's competition out there. Banks, Paypal, Skrill... If BTC wants to be the best, it really needs to be the best.

Agreed with op that Europe bank transfers are free but that's Fiat money we are talking about and Bitcoin is a crypto currency. Paypal is going to take a big hit as it has stopped payments to entire ptc industry even the reputed clicksense and neobux were not spared. I had a horrible experience and trauma of loosing all my funds, so even if I need to wait I will choose Bitcoin any day. Now you say banks offer free transfer but do they give price rise like Bitcoin does no right. Bitcoin is really good and one should stick to it irrespective of the delays which I am sure will processed out someday.

[EcoNorm]

first of all, thats not true for all europe, second of all as you stated there are so manny advantages for bitcoin that banks just can provide like the privacy and individuality

[countryfree]

you are comparing a finished tool against a non-finished one, bitcoin still don' scale properly, when they activate segwit or hard fork to 2mb or whatever they want to do to address the scalability bitcoin will have proper fee

if you compare it to fiat and the time they need you can actually pay 10k satoshi and be very lucky that it will confirm in one dday, like sepa(actually sepa can take 3 days some time...) so 0.1 cent against free not a big deal for me

Oh, yes. This topic is just a wake-up call. I understand BTC's still in the works, but the scalability problem is taking way too long to fix, and segwit doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Rate of adoption has stalled, so I don't know what's next but ever rising fees do not look like a smart solution.

Something better must be done.

[ivanst776]

Just a reminder.

From my European bank account, I can make a SEPA transfer to any other European bank account for free. No fee. Nothing to pay. It normally takes one and a half business day so BTC is faster, way faster, but that's not always the case because of the congestion. That used to be exceptional but it's getting the norm. The only way out is a higher fee, which makes BTC less appealing.

Sure, BTC remains the best option for extra-European transfers, and BTC still has the advantage of privacy by being difficult to link to one individual, but all miners and developers shall never forget there's competition out there. Banks, Paypal, Skrill... If BTC wants to be the best, it really needs to be the best.

You have mixed some things here, Europe and EU are two different things but have many things in common.

SEPA transfers are limited only to EU countries and not for other countries that are already in Europe, if it is free then lucky you even though it take 1 day and a half.

Of course that bitcoin is faster but it can be slower if there is an blockchain attack or a stress test or if the fees are too low.

[xuan87]

There are a  lot of reasons why people choose bitcoin over fiat, some people prefer to so transaction without entering the ID detail where it can be tracked and maybe can be used for criminal activity, when sending money using bitcoin in different country, we don't need to convert it to fiat and calculate the rate anymore, but I do agree bitcoin need to keep on doing the best so people attracted to used it for transaction