Small transactions: cash is faster and 100% secure (money goes from person X to person Y and is verified by counting in 10 seconds or less, vs. bitcoin's 20 minute block confirmation wait).
"Cash is faster"? WTF?
Maybe if I'm stood next to you. But have you heard of this crazy new thing called "the Internet"?
Let's race. You send $4 cash to Hong Kong; I'll send $4 worth of bitcoins. Why would I want to do that you ask? Ever bought a small gadget from ebay? Ever bought an MP3 for less than a dollar from a server that's halfway around the world.
(you're also forgetting that the bitcoin transactions can be seen within, typically, two seconds; it takes 10 minutes to
clear, compared to days for bank wire transfers to clear).
Bitcoin isn't perfect for everything, and buying your morning newspaper might well not be one of its "optimum" uses; but you're seriously ignoring huge areas were bitcoin is, essentially, unbeatable.
Speaking from the perspective of a very wealthy individual, why care about such an inferior currency system at all? This is a proof of concept, not designed for mainstream use, and needs a lot of work. Respect bitcoin for what it is and what it proves. Graham Bell's first telephone is NOT an iphone. Got it?
I don't think anyone is claiming otherwise. The lead developer regularly calls bitcoin an "experiment" in interviews.
Ok, let's race. Because your leaving out some steps, and using an unrealistic amount. What if I give you 10k USD to send so anyone in Hong Kong can recieve/and use? Now you have to convert that to Bitcoin first(fast right?), have the other person setup a bitcoin wallet(piece of cake), then they have to convert the Bitcoin back out to cash to actually use it for anything except buying a stack of ASIC miners(that will never arrive). That's easy too right? I'm sure we just missed the news about all the banks where you can just walk in and get dollars for your Bitcoins in Hong Kong.
While your doing all that, I'll walk into a bank with the cash, wire the money to there account, and they have actual cash they can use tomorrow.
Hell, I could just go into the bank, get a certified check, walk over to the FedEx office and send it "FedEx International Next Flight" and they'll have the certified check in hand in less than 24hrs, walk it into there bank, and have usable funds.
Actually, no, sending the certified check via FED EX internationally would not be so fast or easy. But for your earlier point, I would think a comment is in order.
Your argument presumes that the receiver must THEN go and set up his method of transfering back to cash. Why? Why just then? Why not presume that the sender and receiver are already set up? If it was a credit card transaction, one would already have a credit card, and the other would already have a way to process payments.
So to be fair, you have to make the comparison not for the moment of conversion back to the local currency, but for the moment when the two parties both consider the transaction complete, whatever that means to them. If the receiver religiously moves the bitcoin back to a currency, then that's his moment. If the receiver keeps and hoards the bitcoin, that is his moment of completion.
So this is not any different than the receipt, say of US dollars in a country with a failing currency - one guy must and does go to exchange them for the local currency, another holds them.