RE: Taking Apart the Ripple Conspiracy
This does reveal another basic, and common, misunderstanding.
Banks don't exist for you and me. They serve you and me, making it possible to pay bills and pull cash out of the ATM, but we're kinda secondary. Banks exist mainly to front up government's economic policy. Government and the central bank decide on things such as money supply and interest rates, and the banks effectively implement that policy.
Crypto has the potential to create a very real alternative for us, agreed, and that's very exciting. But banks ain't going anywhere anytime soon. They'll fight crypto. They'll lobby for controls and regulations. They'll try to limit it's uptake in the wider economy. They may even succeed in some areas. But ultimately, DLT and blockchain changes everything. They know that, and they're much more likely to integrate it and use this technology for their own ends. Just look at the news out of Venezuela - the government are about to launch their own crypto, backed by their own oil reserves, in a move designed to bring down 4-digit hyper-inflation which they blame, more or less correctly, on the stranglehold exerted on them by the US.
Banks won't be able to stop the move to crypto, any more than the postal service companies were able to stop the move to email.