... For how long should people understand the importance to have bitcoins for emergencies such as this one?
Okay let's assume the lady has bitcoins on her non-custodial wallet but she still needed to sell it for fiat because the hospital doesn't accept BTC. What if she tried to trade it on a centralized exchange and the platform suddenly froze her account for some reason? That's still going to be a problem. How about P2P platforms?
I guess in a world we're bitcoin becomes a secondary currency at least because, there would always be a fiat currency to be primary. This issues could be avoided to some extent and then, we would have transaction fees and confirmation time to contend with. The network would be very congested although, the lopehole to it would be scanning the withdrawal address of an incoming payment and being able to verify if it is particulate to a customer.
But in the main time, we've got fiat to always exchange for and most banks have a withdrawal or transfer limit, both at the ATM and at the Desk.
Why cause of wonder is,
Just how was this individual able to get past security with a gun into the bank!