> As someone with a split existence between North America and the Euro Zone, I was sincerely hoping that cryptocurrency would at a minimum be a reliable medium of exchange: i.e. a way to convert dollars into euros and vice-versa in a matter of minutes with very low fees.
You're not looking for a new currency, you're looking for a regular currency exchange. Whatever fees your currency exchange charges for going from EUR to USD (and back) can only increase if you need to involve another exchange (for the bitcoin-conversion).
So the promise of Bitcoin when I started reading up about it was that the fees could be close to zero. It's become less of an issue, because there are some traditional currency exchange services out there which have reasonable flat-rate offerings nowadays, but I would still be happy to pay less.
You're not looking for a new currency, you're looking for a regular currency exchange. Whatever fees your currency exchange charges for going from EUR to USD (and back) can only increase if you need to involve another exchange (for the bitcoin-conversion).