[jhugo]

Alibaba could already avoid that need for individual transactions by just holding balances in the different currencies, like e.g. Wise and many other retail forex providers do. They only need to deal with correspondent banks for balancing out those accounts in case more money flows in one direction than the other, and those transactions are large so the costs are not as much of a concern.

In any case, your argument presumes some desire to get rid of the correspondent banks. Most people don't have that desire, they just want the money to go from A-B reasonably cheaply, and there are existing great solutions for that except at the fringes — like criminals, avoiding sanctions, avoiding capital controls, etc — which is why crypto stays on those fringes.

[CryptoPunk]

>>Most people don't have that desire, they just want the money to go from A-B reasonably cheaply, and there are existing great solutions for that except at the fringes

Yes, it is for the fringes. One day Alibaba could find itself on the fringes, as collateral damage in some geopolitical dispute that locks it out of the centralized global financial system, as a result of which country it is based in.

I have no idea if this concern motivated Alibaba's reliance on crypto though.

[MrMan]

Alibaba is under more threat from its own government than any outside force