As someone who has used Western Union and ended up in money-trail hell, I can tell you with complete confidence that Western Union and their ilk are huge pains

As someone who has used Western Union and ended up in money-trail hell, I can tell you with complete confidence that Western Union and their ilk are huge pains in the butt and charge too much for their overly complex "service". Sure, you need to get money into bitcoin and then out in order to take advantage of that property, but the ability to do that is getting easier and cheaper all the time.