And since bitcoin is mostly unregulated, we get to deal with fun things like exchanges manipulating the market in order to inflate the price of bitcoin, as Mt. Gox did. Worse, every honest exchange will be manipulated too, because a fluctuation at one exchange will always affect every other. The net effect is that we have transferred power from regulated markets whose regulation is enforced by governments to private businesses that manipulate the market.

I don't know how the stock market has dealt with these issues. What if someone were to set up a stock exchange in a country without laws that prohibit market manipulation? Would manipulation at that exchange affect every other exchange, as a bitcoin exchange would? How would traders in America or Europe detect and respond to that manipulation? Surely this is a problem that has already been addressed for the stock market, so maybe bitcoin could use the same solution. (That seems difficult without regulation, but maybe whatever solution the stock market uses could work for bitcoin too.)

Totally! I hate queuing in the bank to manage my account (and of course only open at the time when I'm working too). I hate that Paypal only lets me withdraw to single bank (out of like 50...) here in Taiwan because they misinterpret and misrepresent Taiwanese law (so I have to go and open an account). I hate that it takes days to handle a transfer because of the trust and verification involved. I hate that for some of the places you need particular OS or particular software to do banking (Windows and ActiveX for most banks here if they even have an online banking system, and I'm on Linux), so most often I have to actually walk to an ATM and do my business there (when they are working...).

There are a lot of bitcoin haters out there. I personally could not ever go back exclusively to the old ways. I love that finance is in my own hand!

By the way, this makes me much more generous as well! (I've donated much more via bitcoin directly to people I wanted to support than I'd ever done via fiat: too much hustle, too big cut by others, and they also have their independence and choices of cashing the coins out if they need, or use whatever they want to manage it).