[elliekelly]

> rather than a days-long ACH batch file

Same-day ACH exists today. Even for international transactions. Most ACH batch files can be processed in as little as an hour. To the extent there's anything preventing "instant transactions" its (1) AML regulations and (2) internal/contractual (Visa, etc.) fraud prevention, not the ACH process.

[bhupy]

That's not the point though, the point is that Bitcoin is not comparable to the entire financial system, rather it's comparable to raw cash. Just like it's pretty infeasible for everyone to always use cash all the time, it would be pretty infeasible for everyone to always use Bitcoin-on-the-blockchain to buy a cup of coffee.

What Bitcoin allows you to do is build a financial system comprised of products that look like Venmo, credit cards, banks, etc on top of a currency system that's 1) censorship resistant (unlike ACH), and 2) independent of central bank monetary policy (unlike most fiat currencies).

The degree to which you care about (2) is obviously based on your political leanings, but (1) basically turns paper-money in-person transactions into something that can happen between strangers over the Internet unencumbered. Most crypto bulls hope that the vast majority of people use instant bank-driven payments, just based on the blockchain at the lowest layer, rather than USD-over-ACH.

And to be clear, I'm not really a crypto bull and I don't really have a horse in the race. But this is the steel-man argument for crypto.