An ACH transfer through my bank takes multiple days. I've only made a few transactions on crypto, but confirmation was more like seconds to minutes.

> An ACH transfer through my bank takes multiple days

But that's just a regulation and/or implementation issue.

You can transfer in minutes between countries in different currencies without blockchain.

The fact that your country is stuck in the stone age in this regard isn't really a good argument that cryptocurrencies fundamentally provide value over a solution without blockchains.

I guess the main value blockchain could provide here is to give banks and politicians a kick in the butt, and force them to invest in solutions and regulations that speed up money transfers.

In practical terms the main value of cripto is to people that are legally forbidden to access these kind of services. Even if the Nigerian prince was a scan there are many countries where limited access to financial services is unescapable; it is to them that crypto has the greatest value proposition (whether it will be good or bad in reality I have no idea)

That’d be true if the BCH people won, but btc as a mechanism to evade oppressive governments doesn’t work for the masses when transaction costs are so high.

Yes, nowadays Bitcoin is just a shell of its former self. It simply is not practical for anything other than Tulip manias. That's incredibly sad. Practical usage of Bitcoin doesn't even compete with the speculation beyond transaction capacity. If anything speculators would prefer an economy built on Bitcoin that actually guarantees that it's more than just an instrument for speculation.

In euro area we have SEPA instant payments. Cross border payments that take place in real-time (10 seconds max).

Took some time for the old banks to wake up, but I think they have been doing decent work on catching up.

I was imagining paying subway for my lunch using money.

Most people use debit/credit cards which batch process in the evening and the store doesn't get the funds until some time after that. And the fees to merchants on those cards are in the range of 2%.