Fraud disputes are literally the only reason the fees were historically justified. These days however, various large companies strictly prohibit a user from engaging in any dispute, causing the user's account to be frozen if a dispute is initiated. This means there rarely any fraud dispute anymore, so paying a premium for it is typically a waste.

I mean, this whole Forex fee horse has been beaten to death by crypto evangelists for the past decade, and yet, it seems “unsolvable”?

Wise used to be almost completely free (excl spread), but they also introduced small % based fees over 1-2 yrs ago. They have had and continue to have many competitors, all of whom are experimenting with pricing models all the time.

If crypto could solve this, or if a trad-fi competitor could disrupt this, they would have. But that is not a very satisfying story, so here we are…

Your comment shows how little you know about stablecoins, the legislation that passed this year, and what's coming with the planned introduction of stablecoins by major retailers. Your extreme ignorance does not give you the right to preach nonsense.

Your response would be well served with a link to an article/blog that explains why I am so obviously wrong about forex fee disruption? Maybe even a short summary of how exactly the hand waving you’re doing correlates to the opinion I posted?

The simplest way in which crypto solves forex, at least in a narrow sense, is by the vendor accepting payment in a stablecoin, such as in one that matches the price of USD or EUR 1:1. Examples are USDT and DEUR. The transaction fees are very low, and there are no pumps and dumps. Swap fees between different stablecoins also are a lot lower than what a bank would charge as a forex fee.

One is of course always free to use real cryptocurrency too, e.g. BTC and XMR, although they are subject to pumps and dumps, although the price rises over time.

It’s very unclear to me if you actually understood the discussion about forex fees.

One does not “solve” forex by trading in a common shared currency, that is already possible without stablecoins - it’s just that vendors often want their local currency and therein lies the problem.

Even if everyone moved to stable coins or Monopoly money, once you need to cash out in IRL, you encounter forex fees.

A sort-of example is Trump’s insistence on oil being traded purely in USD for the USA’s hegemonic benefit - but other nations are waking up and opposing this status quo actively.

Cashing out crypto is a nightmare from a taxation pov. It's better to just spend it directly, and this is increasingly possible on online stores that accept it. I understand that this limits its use, but I project that these limits will keep diminishing as time passes.