For a very large number of people, these aren't "extremely niche use cases."

Something more comparable to Bitcoin than regular banking would be Western Union; they make 5 billion dollars a year in revenue transferring money. And they charge vastly higher rates than the Bitcoin network does, charging in the 5-10% range for for transactions, which is a pretty hefty overhead.

Not the same since it's on the mining, not the transactions, but here we have the founders taking 20% of the value of the network for the first four years. That's a decent overhead, too.

This is not "niche." Every person living outside of the states has this problem. Next time you need something even remotely specific or customized, head on over to amazon.ca and see if you can find the item you're looking for. Then when you can't, think of other countries that aren't directly beside the most consumer friendly country on earth.

> Every person living outside of the states has this problem.

WTF are you saying?

Cross border electronic payments are a pain because many US companies won't ship internationally because merchants are the ones that are liable in cases of fraud.