> I'm going to hazard a guess that you have never sent money to family overseas.
Bitcoin is utterly useless in this regard. Converting bitcoin to usable currency is very impractical in most locales and nearly impossible in others (no, meeting up with strangers to exchange bitcoins for cash at a 20% markup does not count).
Maybe useless if you need to convert it to paper dinosaur money at the other end...
No middlemen taking a cut at every step is one advantage of Bitcoin, and very fast international transfers is another.
I think of Bitcoin as an awesome idea for a replacement of the current corrupt system, not something that integrates well with it. It is not perfect but it's certainly better than the current system. Might be unrealistically idealistic but I hope a cryptocurrency succeeds. Anyway, it is still possible for people to transfer Bitcoin between themselves with no middlemen.
> Maybe useless if you need to convert it to paper dinosaur money at the other end
The vast majority of people on this planet use "paper dinosaur money" because that is what the overwhelming majority of merchants accept. There's also the fact that most people will have to convert their local currency into bitcoin before sending it because they aren't bitcoin enthusiasts who have arbitrary sums of bitcoin at their disposal. Most of the time acquiring bitcoin requires a bank account and can take days to acquire because of KYC and bank account verification (and that assumes you're comfortable uploading your photo id and other documents to bitcoin services).
> I think of Bitcoin as an awesome idea for a replacement of the current corrupt system
The cryptocurrency ecosystem is infamous for its association with fraud, abuse and incompetence. Whenever a bitcoin company goes offline for more than a few hours it's actually a serious concern that the operators might have absconded with the funds leaving users utterly powerless to recover their money or bring the operators to justice. Bitcoin operators have lost or stolen MILLIONS of dollars worth of money from bitcoin users... yet the current system is the corrupt one. My "dinosaur money bank" has never lost or disappeared with my money. Literally never.
> it is still possible for people to transfer Bitcoin between themselves with no middlemen
Which is useless if your overseas family wants to pay for goods and services like groceries, rent, medical care and other basic needs. You can say whatever you like about the ease of moving bitcoins internationally but it's a fact that almost everywhere in the world bitcoins are not accepted in exchange for goods and services and most people are not technically sophisticated enough to safely convert their bitcoins into local currency.
Nonsense. I've been using it for years to send money to my family back home and it's been nothing but seamless and extremely useful in every single way. Send bitcoins to a local exchange, convert into fiat and withdraw into a local bank account. Total expended time: 10 minutes. Compare that with using WU, where someone physically has to go to a local WU office, or even worse, doing a wire transfer where the recipient bank puts a freeze on the money until AML documentation is cleared (typically handled by calling the bank and stating the source of the money, but still a pain).
Another way to send money is to get a bitcoin debit card, give it to a family member and load it every time you want to send money.
Uninformed opinions should be kept to oneself, lest one ends up looking like they're talking out of their ass.
Let's do a little thought experiment. Suppose that I, living in the USA, want to send money to my aunt living in the Caribbean. Let's also say that she has never used bitcoin (like most people) and that I don't have an account on a bitcoin exchange (like most people). How do I get her $1000 within 24 hours using bitcoin?
With bitcoin you can transfer money internationally for cents and in seconds.