> What am I missing? > We know transactions are slow and expensive ^ You're missing this. * Cross-border transactions which would take days for Swift are ins

> What am I missing? > We know transactions are slow and expensive ^ You're missing this. * Cross-border transactions which would take days for Swift are instant * Expensive: no not really. In the filled mempool days, yes prices shot up, but that was a few years ago. Fees are incredibly low now. * Non-int transactions are still just about the same speed as a Visa cc/debit swipe. Again, when the mempool is going insane (hasn't happened in some time), yes TXs could take time vs. fees. However, nowadays it's just about as quick to reach a "basically verified" TX as it whatever risk mgmt balancing Visa is doing in the background. This time, instead of Visa's fraud department doing some checks, it's 1 or 2 blocks to very likely confirmed, 6 blocks to definite. Just different ways of skinning the same cat. You're correct on this > also lacks a lot of the controls that traditional banks have for good reasons, But you're blending some arguments that are counterfactual if taken together as something cohesive. It's fast because it doesn't have these controls, for instance.