[nwah1]

If a payment channel is still open, then the blockchain hasn't confirmed anything yet, the only speedup is to reduce roundtrips to the blockchain in the case of a series of transactions. So you are still limited by the speed of the blockchain, unless you decide to trust parties in the Lightning Network.

[nwah1]

Onion routing also requires trust that there is no collusion between nodes

[varajelle]

You seem to dislike lightning network, but the reason given are not accurate.

What would happen if there was collusion between nodes?

And while it is true that you are still limited by the Blockchain speed if the nodes don't cooperate, all the incentives are made so they do cooperate and that transactions happen near instantly.

[nwah1]

Incentives in the existing ACH and SWIFT systems are such that transactions are fast and accurate.

But businesses have to follow the law. If a regulation were imposed, people would feel a need to comply. If they said to block transactions from Iran, on penalty of imprisonment, then they would do so. Etc. Avoiding all of that was the exact motivation for bitcoin. Adding all of the features and drawbacks of existing systems into bitcoin would undermine bitcoin's reason for existence.

Centralization at every layer of bitcoin has been the rule. Mining, exchanges, etc. Their dominance is so complete that if only a few of the primary exchanges were to blacklist an individual, they would have a very difficult time. In the same way that Mastercard and VISA banning PornHub is a major harm to that website.

Censorship-resistance is thus out the window, and there really isn't that many benefits left for bitcoin after that.