All traditional methods use gatekeepers that control the flow of money. If you can't do what you want with your money is it really yours? The Trustless nature of BTC involves a seeming waste of energy, but you get a lot in return (like ownership of your money).

> The Trustless nature of BTC involves a seeming waste of energy, but you get a lot in return (like ownership of your money).

You get that too with proof of stake. Bitcoin really only has the branding of being the first mover, and as such as a strong chance of remaining the digital gold (not a digital currency that’s fast and easy to transact)

Have you heard of the lightning network?

Sure, but my point was not really about trust. My point is that speed is easier to achieve without Blockchain than with it. It's strange that the centralised solution is slower.

The removal of human trust is the source of the speed.

It's effectively the automation of slow, human intermediaries in the financial network that allows you to create a programmable money that runs 24/7 and is open and permissionless to boot.

And with this programmable network, we can see an explosion of innovation, because nobody needs to wait around for a person to approve anything you want to try.

You do realize that currency settlement takes 1-2 days, right?

"Spot foreign exchange transactions usually settle two business days after the execution date"

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/settlementdate.asp#:~:t....

Real-time gross settlement is the instant way of transferring money between banks. Try and send $100K to someone and getting it done same day. Most people don't have access to that system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_gross_settlement

That’s because the current system is not centralized, the current system is heavily decentralized. It basically is based on a lot of different banks trying to partner with one another. Blockchains are distributed databases, and as such they emulate a centralized server. That’s why it’s faster.

The centralized, heavily regulated solution is slower.

If they could impose all the regulation they want on permissionless, trustless p2p decentralized networks, those would be slow and massively expensive, too.

Fortunately, they haven't the power. They can attack the edges (and ultimately every centralized stablecoin can be attacked) but they can't stop, say, uniswap.

I’m under the impression that we are starting with decentralized ledgers with traditional banking. The problem solved by blockchain is the synchronization/balance of payments between the ledgers by just making everyone track the same unified ledger.

You got it right. Blockchains emulate a centralized server, whereas the current financial system is heavily decentralized and hence slow.

I doubt that the solution is based on proof of work. Most modern cryptocurrencies are proof of stake.

really the thing that makes traditional payments slow is chargebacks