Look I think we're talking past eachother here but to re-iterate one last time:

> The quoted part is a misunderstanding that's refuted in following paragraphs. I fully agree with it - Ripple isn't centralized.

They didn't refute it at all. There's one company that publishes a list of trusted nodes. That's the definition of centralization. There's no proof of work, or proof of stake protecting the system. There's one company that publishes a list of a few other companies that they also trust. That's. Not. Decentralization. Not in any meaningful way. Try getting on that list and let me know how it goes.

They could skip a lot of steps and just, again, run all this through an RDS instance with some Merkle trees and publish a feed.

> Nope. There's no way for me and you to directly access SWIFT for deposits and withdrawals like we can sign up with TransferWise or send funds directly from one crypto wallet to the other. We have to go through our banks, who route transactions through chain of trusted intermediaries, who add their own processing fees.

There's no way to use Ripple to just "move money" without leveraging a fiat gateway. Exactly the same thing. You're comparing just the "swift" analog (Ripple) to the entire banking infrastructure. For example, I've got $20. How do I send it to my buddy in London with Ripple? I can't just "ripple" it. I need a fiat gateway, an exchange, I need to get a bank account at a real bank, deposit the money, move it to an exchange (1-2%, 3-5 days), then I need to pay a transaction fee (and I better not mistype the address otherwise it's gone for good) then my buddy needs to receive the Ripple, move it to his bank account (1-2%, 3-5 days), and withdraw it.

Or, I can just use Transferwise. It's much, much easier, and frankly, a lot less expensive.

> TransferWise cleverly bypasses this in balanced corridors where no money has to be moved though the network of financial institutions, but that's a very limited business. They are very far from serving the whole world at cheap rates, and their niche business is no indication of how much a typical international transaction costs.

What TransferWise is doing is how all forex works. Everywhere. SWIFT and Ripple included. No money ever actually moves between borders, just ledger entries. Ripple isn't doing anything novel.

> How reassuring. Sadly, banks do not pass on the savings to customers, and the entry barrier for newcomers with better pricing is very high. Even smaller banks are getting fucked, let alone retail customers.

Small customers can use Transferwise. Bigger customers can negotiate rates. Literally anyone can sign up for an InteractiveBrokers account and get those Forex rates. Probably easier than signing up for a shady fiat gateway/exchange for crypto. Another common misconception: Western Union isn't at all uncompetitive, and available the world over.

Small banks aren't getting fucked. They may not be passing on the savings but they could use IBKR if they wanted to. And SWIFT is not at all expensive for banks.

You've a deep misunderstanding of how the global economy works, sadly, and I suggest instead of getting swept up in this crypto madness, you learn more about how the global economy functions. Many of the problems you cite don't really exist, and neither do these supposed benefits.