Some superior aspects of Bitcoin over Banks we overlook.

[mendace]

I would be better if the banks did not exist because they are scams and have complete control over your money and if they decided to go bankrupt you cannot argue to get your money back you will lose it. Some countries in Europe and the US protect the money up to a certain amount but you do not get it instantly and it can take a very long time for you to be compensated for a bank going bankrupt. At least that cannot happen with Bitcoin and you have the complete control of the wallet.
[/quote]

There will come a time when banks will compete to appropriate Bitcoin and I wonder what could change for that part of the population who don't know how to get a Bitcoin or some satoshi.  Then the banks will come to mediate the purchase and bitcoins will be centralized again because they will be in the cold wallets of the banks.

[Darker45]

~snip~

You're right that many people are attracted to Bitcoin because it offers them the opportunity to make money, but that doesn't mean they aren't comparing themselves to the banks.  Indeed, many people are using Bitcoin as an alternative form of investment and are comparing the returns of Bitcoin with those of traditional banks.

I'm not sure if people are actually comparing this. For me, it makes no sense. My regular savings account in the bank doesn't even give me 1% of interest per annum. That 1% could be earned with Bitcoin in just an hour. So, they're not even comparable.

Perhaps you could compare Bitcoin with stocks or bonds or gold but not returns from traditional banks. Even time deposits could only give you more or less 2% of profit in a year.

Personally, however, I advise against approaching Bitcoin as a form of investment but rather as a free form of payment.

Well, this is oftentimes just hollow words. So, while I may agree with you, the reality is that everybody is talking about the price, not because it strengthens the purchasing power of Bitcoin but because it means they are making more money.

[Iranus]

(2) Excess fees on transactions: Banks charge you for transactions, and the government charges you for using banks. For example, in my country, we pay VAT(known as Value added Tax) when a transaction exceeds a certain threshold, and you will be charged for that transaction. This is what the government and banks do to people, whereas Bitcoin is free. Transaction fees vary depending on how busy the network is; you may pay as little as a cent when the mempool is nearly empty.

Heavily depends on country and banks. In my country banks usually have zero fees when doing transactions with other customers of the bank, and 0.5% to other banks inside the country. This is through Visa, if using direct bank transfers the fee is 0.5-1% but capped at $15 max, so you won't pay thousands if you send millions.

Bitcoin on the other hand can have pretty high fees on mainnet sometimes. And there's not much you can do about it.

(3) Extra charges for bank notifications: I'm not sure if banks in other countries provide similar choices, but when you enroll for transaction notifications, you will be charged for SMS and email messages. Assume we have to pay some sats to use bitcoin explorer; everything else, apart from the transaction fee is free with Bitcoin, and that is the freedom of using it.

My banks have apps and send notifications from there, or they send notifications for free through messengers.

This is true, There is no bank in my country that charges a fee when making a transaction or using the service of registering for transaction notification via sms, everything is entirely free as long as the user installs the application and has an internet connection.

My bank account is not charged as OP mentioned, unless I apply for the visa service for international payments, I will have to pay a small fee to register and maintain the service. I don't know if there is a difference between countries, but in my country, there are no high transaction fees or additional fees like OP is talking about.

[wxa7115]

If you go back and see what Satoshi has proposed in his whitepaper is "Peer to Peer electronic Cash transfer" and the idea is to give authority of your money in your hands. Bitcoin has rightly proved over a decade a period the core idea proposed by its founder. Bitcoin is bank whose owner is the person having the private keys to access it.
We need banks atleast for now as governments are totally relying on fiat currency. Bitcoin no doubt has its own benefits and we can use it in parallel to banking system.

I would be better if the banks did not exist because they are scams and have complete control over your money and if they decided to go bankrupt you cannot argue to get your money back you will lose it. Some countries in Europe and the US protect the money up to a certain amount but you do not get it instantly and it can take a very long time for you to be compensated for a bank going bankrupt. At least that cannot happen with Bitcoin and you have the complete control of the wallet.

The financial industry is probably the strongest all around the world and it is not going to disappear no matter how much you wish for it, the truth is that there are good reasons for the financial industry to exist, it is just that they abuse their power to benefit themselves while affecting their customers.

This is why we have bitcoin, and while bitcoin is not going to be enough to make it disappear, at least it offers us an alternative we did not had before.

[Kakmakr]

Also, when you deal with Banks.. you deal with people. Now as you know, it is not a pleasant experience to visit a Bank, because you are already frustrated when you had to stand in a queue at a Bank for 1 hour, before they help you.... then you have to deal with the Bank employee that are tired or in a bad mood. 

The human element are removed from Bitcoin transactions, because it's all automated. You become your own Bank, so you do not need to deal with people. (or ask permission to access your wealth) 

Some transactions in Banks can also be reversed... (Credit cards) ....where no transactions can be reversed with Bitcoin. 

[Cookdata]

.............................

You wouldn't understand the pain of owning a bank if you hadn't had one. I am now dealing with a failed transaction. I've been having issues with my Virtual Bank, also known as OPAY, after using their Card on a POS terminal. I filed a complaint, but I have yet to receive a response. I recently discovered that they svck at customer service; now tell me why I should continue with banking activities. If I had used Bitcoin in the first place, a failed transaction has a maximum of 14 days to stay in mempool, and if any miner could not verify my transaction, it would be returned to my address with no effect on my balance, but banks are simply evil institutions.

[Marvell1]

If you go back and see what Satoshi has proposed in his whitepaper is "Peer to Peer electronic Cash transfer" and the idea is to give authority of your money in your hands. Bitcoin has rightly proved over a decade a period the core idea proposed by its founder. Bitcoin is bank whose owner is the person having the private keys to access it.
We need banks atleast for now as governments are totally relying on fiat currency. Bitcoin no doubt has its own benefits and we can use it in parallel to banking system.

I would be better if the banks did not exist because they are scams and have complete control over your money and if they decided to go bankrupt you cannot argue to get your money back you will lose it. Some countries in Europe and the US protect the money up to a certain amount but you do not get it instantly and it can take a very long time for you to be compensated for a bank going bankrupt. At least that cannot happen with Bitcoin and you have the complete control of the wallet.

The financial industry is probably the strongest all around the world and it is not going to disappear no matter how much you wish for it, the truth is that there are good reasons for the financial industry to exist, it is just that they abuse their power to benefit themselves while affecting their customers.

This is why we have bitcoin, and while bitcoin is not going to be enough to make it disappear, at least it offers us an alternative we did not had before.

The bank has problems that sometimes make us unhappy, but if the bank disappears completely, then I don't want that to happen. Banks provide us with many services, not just depositing or transferring money. I just took a simple example that we see most often: when you need money for some work, what do you do if there is no bank to lend money to, you cannot do it with bitcoin. In general: bitcoin and banking are both useful in our lives, and I need both. There are many solutions and many options that will make our lives easier; why would we prefer to eliminate either?

[Ultegra134]

While I agree with your points, there are banks that offer similar or even the exact same features. First of all, with Revolut or N26, two online banks anyone can register with, you can send money with a SEPA deposit and receive it in a few hours or one business day at most. Fees for European accounts are usually free or minimal at the very best. While some local banks here charge you for SMS notifications, mine doesn't, and neither do the two I mentioned.

On the other hand, I completely agree with the other two points; I've experienced network maintenance issues in the past and account limitations for reasons I wasn't even responsible for.

[coupable]

Opinions differ between those who see Bitcoin as an alternative to the banking system and those who think that both systems can work together in semi-integration, and those who think that Bitcoin can replace the entire financial system (money and banks).
In my opinion, in our current world based on centralization, each system has its advantages and disadvantages, although the banking system's disadvantages are much more than its advantages. Bitcoin can replace the role of banks as a money transfer system, via the blockchain. And in a global system governed by banks, it will not be easy to dispense with banks since it is not easy to dispense with fiat money.

[samcoin]

(5) Banks' freezing of accounts and limitations: You wouldn't understand if your account had never been frozen before. Banks can make life difficult; you might lose everything if you fail to read their terms and conditions, and there is nothing you can do except follow due procedure; this is what happens when there is a middleman on any platform. Bitcoin overcomes this limitation by granting no constraints to your wallets; you may spend as much as you like and no one can penalize your account because you possess the private key.

This is the most important point, in my opinion. I can feel the pain of people who got their bank accounts frozen for different reasons. In Lebanon, thousands of people lost their money or got their bank accounts frozen due to many banks being declared bankrupt, even the central bank of the nation wasn't able to hold the situation. Therefore, the people there have realised the importance of a technology like the blockchain and especially Bitcoin, which resulted in a spike in crypto currency usage in Lebanon and the other countries where there are similar situations. Indeed, it's a great feeling to have full control over your money, and crypto currencies are becoming the best form of money.

[AverageGlabella]

There will come a time when banks will compete to appropriate Bitcoin and I wonder what could change for that part of the population who don't know how to get a Bitcoin or some satoshi.  Then the banks will come to mediate the purchase and bitcoins will be centralized again because they will be in the cold wallets of the banks.

I do not know how they would compete how can you convince people who like to have the freedom of not using a 3rd party to use their service when it makes it less secure. I think in the next 10 years most people will be self custody and there will be a small population that use banks to store their Bitcoin if they offer the service but I think it is more likely that people keep their money in fiat if they are prepared to use banks because they miss the point of Bitcoin.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

Banks all across the globe share a similar interest in making money; disregard the pathetic services they provide; if it doesn't involve money, they wouldn't offer it; everything must be profitable, even if it appears that they are assisting people.

Though I agree with every thing said in the op, but the bolded line is actually what caught my attention, and I just imagined how true..
Made me remember an experience I had with my bank one time when I went to deposit some money into my account.

The bank assigned someone to me, to guide me on how to install an app on my phone through which I can pay bill, buy recharge card plus other stuff, the lady was all nice, calm and loving to me that I had no choice but to oblige to every of her instructions, finally, the app was installed and registration and customer verification was done successfully, I went home.
.
After about a week of using the app, I realized that the bank did not actually assist me in any way, they did what they did for their own Monterey gains, fees charged for transactions through the app was exorbitant that at the end, I had no choice but to just delete it.

Indeed, for me, bitcoin is the best form of money at the moment, but like the op said, many are yet to realized this fact.

[Yatsan]

At the present, I see no other advantage of this technology over banks aside from profit potential and avoiding taxes. Regulation and overall acceptance across countries are still an issue which I think limits the advantages of this industry and is something we have to deal with right now. Also, it is hard to conclude still whether the interest this technology is having, would be the same once global adoption occurs in the future thru regulation simply because transactions will no longer be with anonymity and there is a tendency for the market price to stabilize. We all know why cryptocurrencies are in hype and that is because of being profitable. So if it would no longer be, perhaps, then will you still be interested?

[MaterialMouse69]

.............................

You wouldn't understand the pain of owning a bank if you hadn't had one. I am now dealing with a failed transaction. I've been having issues with my Virtual Bank, also known as OPAY, after using their Card on a POS terminal. I filed a complaint, but I have yet to receive a response. I recently discovered that they svck at customer service; now tell me why I should continue with banking activities.

Same experience the bank I'm using got some technical problems that affected my account like it got freeze so I dialed them online. But bro the customer service doesn't even sound concerned with my problem like they don't even announce informations that will make their customer calm with the given situation. I almost thought my account got freeze or hacked.The only thing I could do was went to the their bank and ask for my money to withdraw then I'm out. That's why I never want to put my money in the banks the transactions hassles unlike in the bitcoin. But its up to you where you can trust up your money I just go with my experience.

[Gyfts]

Recently a very large U.S. bank has failed (SVB): https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/10/silicon-valley-bank-is-shut-down-by-regulators-fdic-to-protect-insured-deposits.html

Some portion of funds are secured by the government but after 250k USD, there is no federal security. So there's a lot of people that are worried right now considering the bank has entirely collapsed after failing to secure emergency funding. This bank was publicly traded and any shareholder has completely lost everything.

It's not even as if this bank was mismanaged, necessarily. They invested heavily in tech stocks in 2021 and U.S. treasury bonds. However, the interest rates hikes sank their investments and the tech stock crashes throughout the last few months put them in a rough financial spot.

People with funds in SVB all withdraw simultaneously seeing as SVB was struggling and the sudden surge of mass withdrawals mad sure they were unable to guarantee withdraws (the same situation with FTX).

Moral of the story -- any funds you deposit into a bank are not yours. Banks can and will collapse no matter how large they are.

[BitcoinPanther]

There are too much hassle in opening bank accounts and much more hassle in withdrawing our funds especialy when we are withdrawing a huge amount of money, it will take days depending on the capability of the bank. There is also a daily limit on how much we can withdraw, and if we wanted to increase our withdrawal daily limit, we have to make a request.

Comparing with Bitcoin, we can do whatever we want with our coins.  There is no transaction limit, no verification process, etc..  We just need to install the software and voila we can easily transfer Bitcoins anywhere in the world.