It's important to note that while you may not see a ATM fee, there is one inherent to running the network and machine. Typically the owner of the machine will charge the bank/network for the transaction.

In the same way, when you transfer your money to your friend 'for free' using a direct bank transfer, it might be free to the user at the point of use, but it's being paid for somewhere, indirectly.

When I pay for $20 of groceries with a credit/debit card, someone is paying a transaction fee somewhere. You don't see that as the end-user, although you may be aware of it.

In a similar vein, consider that cash costs money to design, print, enforce anti-forgery, replace over time etc. All costs that have to be borne by the system that should be considered if you're going to compare 'giving your mate $20' vs. 'giving your mate some BTC'.

I think the issue may be that while a grocery store certainly has a payment processing fee to receive $20, they have fees on top of BitCoin. So BitCoin adds to these fees. And the existing fee is very small, between .25-5% for cash/cc while BitCoin is much higher.

There are no fees for me to pay my friend.

I don’t know if you remember the olden days when PayPal was mainly for paying your friend $20. It was slow and cost a lot so not very cool. There would be fees just to send your friend money. This was bad.

While “giving your mate some BTC” is possible, the amount lost to fees is pretty lame.

A fair point, and worthwhile clarification. Thank you.