Let's say I am the type of person who needs a cheap loan, and I decide to use Coinbase. My understanding is that money into Coinbase and money out of Coinbase is going to cost me 1.49% (at least) in each direction, and that's before the additional $1-$10 gas fees in each direction. So 3% + currency risks + whatever other fees + the risk of fat-fingering my crypto and losing it to the ether forever, and also trying to figure out if I have some kind of tax liability, BEFORE the actual interest rate itself.
Or I choose a well-regulated provider to do a money-transfer[0] to and pay a one-off fee of 3-4% for several thousand pounds for a year or longer loan, even if my credit isn't perfect, and I do that with the full protection of the legal system, including bankruptcy protection, easy resolution if I type the wrong account number in, etc. Those are the rates for if I need cash too, if the thing I need to pay for can be paid for by credit-card, the rate falls to closer to 2%...
[0] https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/credit-cards/money-transfe...
I already provided sources for the fees with another exchange.
So, useless on a day to day use for any normal person that's not a Silicon Valley tech bro, understood.
Which is, you know, 90+% of the world
No there's not. Trades on exchanges are under 0.1% [1]. ERC20 tokens have some fees because of gas but it's a flat amount [2], which is negligible for any operation over a thousand dollars. Fiat withdrawals are generally free [3]. The most expensive part usually is the gas to interact with the DeFi smart contract, but it's also a flat fee.
[1] https://help.ftx.com/hc/en-us/articles/360024479432-Fees
[2] https://etherscan.io/gastracker 0.75USD as of now, but it can reach like 10USD when the network is congested.
[3] https://help.ftx.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043023772-Depositi...