I have used Bitcoin over lightning in a way that wouldn't be faster, secure, or cheaper. It could be made more convenient if Apple Pay allowed me to pop it up, but that's not a fundamental issue with the technology. The benefits of using it are no rent-seeking middle-men, increased privacy, and the underlying currency that provides a non-inflationary monetary policy. Within the last 30 days I've used it to buy burgers and was even subject to sales tax.

And about the volatility comment, "volatility" is measured according to a specific exchange rate and can't be measured when you haven't defined a baseline. Bitcoin has high volatility with respect to gold but has trended to having more upward volatility vs downward volatility (whereas the dollar is mostly down).

> Is it a transaction that would have likely been faster, more convenient, secure, cheaper and with less or zero volatility risk using a traditional, centralized funds transfer system, especially if both parties could agree beforehand on the best modern system for that use case instead of being forced to accept cumbersome antiquated things like credit cards?

It could have been more convenient if the fees weren't sky-high and the receivers currency wasn't tanking as the transfer was being made, yes.

But because of the context, and the middle-men involved (no direct bank<>bank transfer possible at all, needed 3rd party), the fees would have made the transaction cost about the same as the value that was being transferred.

I'm also not disputing that the existing "traditional" players could make to things cheaper and actually useful for more people, but they seem to refuse to do so as I'm guessing they'll lose out on a lot of profits if they did.

Again, the point was to compare apples to apples, a completely new system that both parties need to adopt, cryptocurrency vs one of the modern fintech options available to both, not the entrenched incumbents which abuse their market position.

Now, it's plausible no such modern option existed in this specific case, but if that's the case, it's almost certainly a regulatory issue, since all big fintechs are under competitive pressure to expand aggressively. So, this, again, proves the crypto use case as primarily a circumvention tool.

There are definitely bad governments out there and I can sympathize with people trying to evade capital controls, mandatory exchange rates etc., but this is not a reason to dismantle the financial regulatory powers in any of the stable democracies of the free world.

To make an analogy, machine guns are definitely a powerful tool when you are fighting a tyrannical government, but nonetheless I don't want them to become available on my street. It's hard to even make a dual use argument for cryptocurrency, as a money transfer system it doesn't have substantial legal utilization after more than a decade of hitting the mainstream, it's still primarily a vehicle for money laundry, regulatory evasion and speculation.