At least in the US, the worst case is a temporary lockup like you described. Banks are limited in how long they can hold your money. If your money is in a bank, it is guaranteed from fraud and theft.
You can't say that about Bitcoin. Add to that the fact that if you want to use Bitcoin to buy most anything you are going to have to either rely on a bank to handle transfers or find someone on the street with cash to buy the Bitcoin (dangerous with no guarantees).
You're bank just cant 0 out your account. and if your bank gets robbed or goes out of business, you still have your money. not the same for a bitcoin 'bank' as we have seen. they even resorted to telling clients to put their keys on paper, funny that
They might've bought bitcoin on an bitcoin exchange and had their bank account frozen- it still happens frequently. Banks in the US are still scared to do business with bitcoin folks because they don't want to get undue attention down the line
Banks also don't want to do business with bitcoin exchanges because this makes it trivial to loot an account over which you have gained unauthorised access. At the moment the bittcoin market consists primarily of people who value privacy over convenience and criminals. Until the former gets larger you should expect any reasonable bank to be extremely way of the latter.
True, but you can never guarantee 100% security. Banks have the added bonus of accountability -- transactions can generally be traced to real people or organizations, so if a large scale breach occurs, there is at least the possibility of either restitution of stolen funds or the deterrent of criminal prosecution. With bitcoin, you have neither.
As another poster mentioned, this is argument against your bank, not for Bitcoin. Many banks (for example most EU banks) charge zero fees and wire transfers are instant.
It's just incompetence of banking system that this is not supported more widely but there are no technical reasons why it cannot be like this globally for all banks.
So this is not a long term moat for BTC as banks can just become competent one day and this advantage disappears.
There was a recent thread in r/Bitcoin about someone missing a 200k deposit on Coinbase. With the quote "say what you will about the banks, at least you can get on the phone with them." These super anti banking activists want banks when shit really hits the fan, surprise surprise.
BTC will never be a currency for anything legal. Anyone telling you otherwise is pumping so they can eventually dump. Regulations, inflation, etc these are all features, , not bugs. None of the Bitcoin true believers want to spend theirs which is exactly the problem with deflation.
Maybe it can be a store of value. Maybe. It's primarily a Ponzi scheme and a way to buy drugs.
Fortunately, the banks are on Grandma's side on this one. Unlike Bitcoin, banks will not let someone who obtains a few credentials simply transfer an arbitrary amount of money to anywhere in the world in seconds. Banks seems to have many layers of checking for potentially suspicious activity, and ways to reverse transactions that are later proven to be fraudulent.
Bitcoin has some interesting properties, but holding bitcoins directly is definitely not right for anyone who can't be trusted to keep their critical credentials secure no matter what.
In most countries, banks can freeze your funds or kick you out for any reason, unlike crypto where you can’t have assets frozen if you are holding Bitcoin or DAI non custodially. Many banks have monthly fees, charge for international transfers, invest and loan your capital and give you back almost no interest, and there have been a few high profile data breaches that would not be possible in a private chain like Monero.
It's rare to impossible to do this to a regular bank account, and if they did, the bank would be liable. Crypto is a great solution for some stuff, but it's not a pancea to solve every problem.
I had my life savings (all funds in my bank account) frozen, without notice, without explanation, and without recourse for 3 weeks. They literally couldn’t tell me why my account was frozen besides “social security has flagged the account.” This was at one of the largest banks in US. I never committed any crime or suspected of one, or had any weird transactions. When I protested at the branch asking how I’m supposed to pay rent they said “sorry”. After almost 3 weeks they unfroze it without explanation and offered to pay the bounced check fee for my rent.
Yeah I’d rather have bitcoin. Bitcoin removes the need for banks altogether. I don’t want the banks and government in control of my money.
There is zero chance that will happen for bitcoin.
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