With bitcoins, a person in California can send $20,000 USD worth of value to a person in Russia in a matter of seconds, for FREE.
In comparison:
Paypal would cost about $600, and take a few seconds.
Credit card would cost about $600 and take a few days, to a week, or more.
Bank wire would cost about $40, and take one or two days.
This is a joke right? The price now is $2.4. Somebody sends $20,000 USD worth to somebody else. That's 8,333.33BTCs. The recipient wants to cash out immediately to pay for something. Remember, we're comparing this to services like Paypal, bank wires, etc, where in the end the recipient has cash that they can spend anywhere. So, the recipient sells their 8,333.33BTCs on MtGox and, uh oh, at the current depth they get $18,800 (not including MtGox fees!).
To get the same result that they would get from PP (i.e. an end result of cash they can spend anywhere) ends up costing at least twice as much! Isn't it wonderful.