You need exchanges to do anything useful in crypto. And as we've seen most recently in the FTX case, all the exchanges are wretched hives of scum and villainy.
Not really. There are plenty of decentralized exchanges which are proven, reliable, auditable, generally used by many without issues.
see: https://uniswap.org https://curve.fi/ https://1inch.io
It's the centralized exchanges, which are more akin to traditional financial institutions whose records are not on a publicly visible blockchain but rather private databases or... apparently spreadsheets... which fall victim to the same issues we have seen in the past in the traditional financial world.
If that's not possible, it's useless for the proposed use case: "send and receive money globally without any intermediary".
If I want to send someone money, I can send anyone in the world BTC securely and instantly without any intermediary.
If other party wants to convert to fiat then they can do so through an exchange, of which there are many.
Or you could simply use a traditional wire transfer and currency would be converted automatically. USA and Italy exchange millions of dollars every day - it's nothing special.
- You will need to get permission from your bank to send international wire transfers (sign forms/agreements). - takes a long time (in the order of days) - expensive (~$50-$75 for outgoing international wire, and $25-$50 to receive it).
I remember that in the beginning people were dreaming about self-contained crypto economy where exchanges would not be needed - that didn't really work out.
The forms are for KYC activity, and agreements on what the limitations of liability are. The delays are to validate that the transfers are handled and secured, and ideally can't be charged back. The fees are to cover the costs of the people who do the work for that.
It's not perfect, but it's quite a bit better than the checks and balances that exist for folks who get hit by a scam and are convinced to go to a crypto kiosk and pay a scammer because they have been frightened by a threat to a loved one, or are taken in by a scammer about services being cut off, or desperately paying off a ransomware demand in the hopes that your business or personal records won't be leaked or published.
Within the eurozone (the 20 countries using the euro), there’s SEPA instant credit which clears in less than ten seconds, is available 24/7, and costs practically nothing (a few cents). It’s a fine example of how thoughtful regulation can enable a system that is better than any crypto solution.
Crypto is very likely neither cheaper nor faster, since you can't spend the crypto directly, and need to FX it through an exchange on the sending side and the receiving side, each of which will take a cut (often percentages of the total). You also need to fund the account sending, and you need to transfer from the exchange receiving to a bank account. Both of those transfers could also cost money. You're also doing FX twice (USD -> crypto, crypto -> Yen), rather than once (USD -> Yen).
If you fuck up an international wire transfer, it may take a month or two for the funds to make it back, and you may need to have numerous conversations with both banks (I've been through this pain more than once and it sucks). If you fuck up a crypto transfer you lose your money with no recourse.
All-in-all the wire transfer is the better (and probably cheaper/faster) experience.