The point of the article is really that using bitcoin means using a lot of wildly dysfunctional intermediaries. USD to bitcoin and back again is, almost certainly, the most liquid market there is. It's a scalding indictment of bitcoin when part of the promise of bitcoin was that it would be quick, easy and cheap to perform these kind of transactions
It does in his use case, which seems to be a relatively dodgy day trading firm, they are the ones who instigate the fees not the bitcoin network. Funding this by using localbitcoins would have cut down his wait time and his fees on the buy side, however for funding his account that firm would charge those fees whether it was bitcoin or bank transfer. Sure he would have paid small transaction fees on his bitcoin transactions but they would still be a fraction of the $35 international transfer fee from the bank.
to be fair to bitcoin, the primary point of bitcoin is that it's a decentralized ledger not under the control of a government or bank. Ease-of-use was an afterthought.
(but then again, it ended up not being very decentralized, either)
USD to EUR and back again is the most liquid market there is but if you do it in the stupidest way possible (like at the kiosk at the airport) you'll also lose way more than 4%.
OP is either an idiot who thinks he can day trade but can't plan ahead and calculate fees or (more likely) he has an agenda against Bitcoin.
