> The transaction can take hours to clear, you need specific forms of ID to open an account, and the fees are insane.

This is for exchanges, right?

You can have a confirmation with Lightning for like less than 1/100th of a penny and there's no ID requirements for Bitcoin.

I wanted to point out how using Bitcoin is in practice at least equally difficult as using Western Union. For any real use case you need to use an exchange, and AFAIK Lightning Network is not yet widely deployed.

> you need specific forms of ID to open an account

To start using Bitcoin, you don't need any ID. You can download, install, and use the normal Bitcoin client.

You only need ID to open an account on an exchange, and that's because exchanges have to follow Know Your Customer laws just like banks. But if you sell something for Bitcoin, you can accept it without an account anywhere.

You only need an account somewhere to convert between fiat and Bitcoin, and even that can be avoided if you find someone willing to sell you coins for cash.

Yes, any one can transact in Bitcoin quite trivially. But as soon as you want to use it for anything practical outside the tech bubble, you need an account on an exchange. At that point Western Union is probably easier for most people.