In Europe, bank transfers are free and unlimited for all

[BiTZeD]

A SEPA transfer is trackable. I do not want the police to knock on my door 10 years after I did a transaction of a few thousand dollars worth to some tax-free Island. Bitcoin is not and just this is enough.

[DreamSpace]

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

Don't underestimate the risk of a central bank failure, many people are holding bitcoin because of economic dislocations.

[Raimonn]

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.

In my country it depends on banks, there are banks that charge commissions on Sepa transfers to other banks ( and free Sepa transfer to another account of the same bank), and banks that have always free Sepa transfers.

[Kprawn]

You know you one of the lucky people out there.... right? In many other countries, banks and remittance services are ripping people off with

outrageous fees.   As you said, under normal circumstances.. Bitcoin is definitely a better option, but GREED has taken over now, and people

are milking the current situation for higher fees and to make a bigger profit. In the end... this will turn people against this technology as a

alternative to other technologies. They are just not seeing it now, because they are blinded by their own GREED.  

[ged00u]

Well, don't suppose that if Europe has no fee transactions, the rest of the world will be the same. Some countries, including mine, is causing a lot of annoyance for the people because of unreasonably high fees for transferring money. So to us, bitcoin is still an important alternative currency and it plays a huge role in international transactions. And that bitcoin is the best doesn't mean that it has no flaw. And things don't come for free, everything has its price.

[20kevin20]

I don't really care, they can be instant and easy to complete but I don't care as soon as I can be questioned at any time about the money I send or receive. Nobody asks me where does the money go to or come from when it comes to Bitcoin, but if I sent $100k through a bank I would have to declare it not to have problems later.

[MFahad]

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

Bitcoin transactions cannot be tracked, that does not mean that this feature is only liked by criminals. Even normal person like me  like this fact. As you know if government knows about your transactions they will ask you proof of where this money came from and did you pay taxes on it etc. Most of people use bitcoins only to avoid taxes.

[Dudeperfect]

Digital payments are the need of this era and every country should focus on promoting and inculcating the habit of digital payments. I am from India and I am happy to tell that the Indian government is giving away  3400 million rupees in form of rewards for those who are using digital payments such as debit card, net banking etc. 7,000 Weekly rewards and much more.

It is also beneficial for the bitcoin as our cryptocurrency is based on 100% digital technology so I am sure in next few years, we will have strong bitcoin userbase.

[Senor.Bla]

I agree and am preaching almost the same lately. Even a year ago Bitcoin was all about how quick and cheap the transfers are and how this will cause mass adoption an the fall of the banks. Today banks offer also quick and cheap/free possibilities of money transfer. Not all the time, but most of us have no need to send money to a foreign country all the time.
Yes, you still control your Bitcoins and nobody can take them away. But many people are perfectly fine to not be the ones in charge of their money. Personally i can not understand this, but to some being your own bank seems to be a burden. Just look how many look for a bank or hardware wallet for safe keeping their keys.
And what about privacy? Exchange adopt more and more the KYC standards and it is getting harder to stay anonymous/pseudonymous.
Offline merchants are still not adopting Bitcoin at a scale we were dreaming about and i do not see it change quickly. Which is maybe even good, considering, that Bitcoin has some troubles with the amount of transactions it can handle.
So what is really left of all these promises? The price is still rising like crazy, but if you consider the circumstances i wonder why. I just wonder what happens if this also changes.

[error08]

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.

Bitcoin is more attractive then, this problem has discussed like 1000 times and never tipped, no act, no solution but remain argued.
Higher fees isn't problem as long as not exceed $1 USD, but block size which ended thousands of unconfirmed transaction that matter.
We're no longer enjoy fastest money transaction over the world but we have to wait for hours, maybe days just for confirmed transaction.
It is not about the fees, but how devs team and miners agreed to make bitcoin to be the best.

[BrewMaster]

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.

this is what is going to happen if the fee war continues on. transactions become more and more expensive and this will start making the currency side of bitcoin fade away and eventually disappear, making bitcoin just a luxury investment and nothing more. because people are not going to give up fiat to use something they don't understand to also pay more fees.

[ImHash]

Can you still transfer $200M with zero fee? do you not know banks only transfer the credits and not liquid money? with bitcoin you can pay $1 to transact millions of dollars in less than 10 minutes.
Problem regarding block size if increases then miners would have consume much more electricity to mine blocks while spam transactions are included in blocks without any BTC actually moving around and the solution to avoid that is paying some high fees that is less than a dollar.

[bob123]

I rather pay some cents for a transaction to be able to send money all over the world without being tracked
and without waiting 2-3 days until the money arrives.. and in addition to that you dont even control your money..
The Pro's of Bitcoin are not the low transaction fees (even tho they are pretty low.. )
If its about Transaction fees.. and fast payments.. you could use PayPal... but thats well.. a horrible idea (at least in my opinion)

[Yakamoto]

I rather pay some cents for a transaction to be able to send money all over the world without being tracked
and without waiting 2-3 days until the money arrives.. and in addition to that you dont even control your money..
The Pro's of Bitcoin are not the low transaction fees (even tho they are pretty low.. )
If its about Transaction fees.. and fast payments.. you could use PayPal... but thats well.. a horrible idea (at least in my opinion)

I can definitely see some of the logic behind a lot of the comments on how mediums such as Paypal or WU or whatever aren't necessarily good and a lot of the time, it's true, they aren't beneficial and they charge far more for their services than they should. I personally prioritize Bitcoin over other forms of wealth transfer, and it works fine for me.

[U2]

Idk, a 10 cent fee or free really doesn't matter to me. I'm not using bitcoins to spend them, I'm using them as a store of wealth. So it has zero affect on me. Wood see shit your currency that's constantly worth less each year gives you free transfers. Sounds like a shitcoin to me lol!

[e-coinomist]

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.

It's in the makings. Until then one can just try to accomplish a Zerofees transfer. Two days later such a transfer has either been beating SEPA transfer times, or you need to do a bitcoin-cli abandontransaction $TXID and send again.
As often as it either works or you are growingly willing to add fees. My bank does that on SEPAs anyways, it's just that on the long term when 1 BTC == 10k EUR the current fee structur will loose ground against almost every payment method available out there.
Bitcoin still has to compete with others, this wount change for upcoming years.

[bg002h]

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.

Money is what money does. I want a SEPA account! Why bother with bitcoin just to get fast and cheap transactions? There's a better alternative for that. Artificially capping size of blocks limits the usefulness of the network. Bitcoin is not worth $100 in its current implementation, imho.

[ImHash]

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.

Money is what money does. I want a SEPA account! Why bother with bitcoin just to get fast and cheap transactions? There's a better alternative for that. Artificially capping size of blocks limits the usefulness of the network. Bitcoin is not worth $100 in its current implementation, imho.

You are forgetting something, no body asked you to use bitcoin and no body wants your money to give the currency the value that it has currently. you can use your SEPA good for you, can you tell me if there is a safe place more than banks to store fiat?
Even when you are depending on banks to keep your money safe you are still a target for bad guys.
No one forcing us to use BTC and no one can touch our coins, we chose to use it and we are still free to use other systems as well. the point for bitcoin usefulness is in it's decentralization.

[erickkyut]

Really? Bank transfers are free and unlimited in Europe? Is it only on a specified country or it is in the whole Europe? This is my first time hearing it. But for me, it is much better to invest your money rather than to put it in banks. There are lots of things to consider such as inflation rate and withholding taxes because instead of gains, you will have loss if you put your money in the banks.

[e-coinomist]

Really? Bank transfers are free and unlimited in Europe? Is it only on a specified country or it is in the whole Europe? This is my first time hearing it. But for me, it is much better to invest your money rather than to put it in banks. There are lots of things to consider such as inflation rate and withholding taxes because instead of gains, you will have loss if you put your money in the banks.

It's still pending which wounderfull bank institution offers free money transfers. One can only hope it isn't the infamous Monte dei Paschi.
Next to some tax problematic and inflation rates there are the first negative interest rates appearing "in Europe" at least south germany, only some private small bank that mostly got rich customers who don't mind that much on a negative percent. The Joe Average depositor would freak out about something like that.