This is the problem that Stellar (<a href="https://stellar.org" rel="nofollow">https://stellar.org</a>) can solve better than Bitcoin. Unlike Bitcoin which takes 10-30 minutes to confirm transactions, Stellar takes seconds with its new consensus system (<a href="https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-worldwide-consensus-359e9eb3e949" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/a-stellar-journey/on-worldwide-consensus-...</a>). This eliminates the need for mining which consumes a exorbitant amount of electrical energy. Stellar is also built to work with a diverse set of currencies (USD, EUR, CNY, BTC etc).
>First, we need to acknowledge that SWIFT is not cheap. If Barclays had to send a SWIFT message to HSBC every time you wanted to pay £10 to Charlie, you would soon notice some hefty charges on your statement.<p>Why is this so? Sure in decades past it might have been expensive to send so many messages, but today it should be easily accomplished with moderate hardware. Wikipedia says SWIFT did about 15M tx/day in Sept 2010. That seems pretty miniscule as far as hardware load goes.
Great article on the global correspondent banking system.<p>For anyone interested in how US domestic payment systems work (checks, ACH, Visa/Mastercard) check out Payment Systems in the US by Carol Benson. It is the bible.
Now that was one of the most eye-opening small articles I've read in a while. Many a times over the years have I been privy to a tiny glimpse here and there of the internal workings of the banks. This helped open the portal a little.
I love the article. This is a kind of explaining that really works for me - building bottom-up, outlining the problems that are to be solved and the new ones a solution introduces. Thanks for posting it, rndn!