Massive institutions with billions of dollars at stake would rather have a predictable and stable regulatory regime to conduct transactions in the shadow of then to rely on a technical solution that supposedly obviates the need for one. Things come up -- bugs, acts of god, internal fraud, hacking, flash crashes, and so forth and so on. They want to be able to go to arbitrator and ask for a sensible and reasonable result and not be reliant on a totally inflexible mechanical rule set. Not the least of which because they can afford the very best lawyers to try to convince those arbitrators that what they want is sensible and reasonable.
With a technology like bitcoin, where receivers are pseudononymous, that would have never been possible.
Noone except for those who wish to remain pseudononymous will ever use bitcoin for any real-world scenarios. The costs are higher, the risks are higher, it doesn't scale, there are no checks and balances.
I don't want bitcoin for the same reason I don't want an AI to run national defenses.
"Let me explain why. In economic organization, we must distinguish between enforcing rules and making rules. Laws are rules enforced by state bureaucracy and made by a legislature. The SWIFT Protocol is a set of rules enforced by SWIFTNet (a centralized computational system) and made, ultimately, by SWIFT’s Board of Directors. The Bitcoin Protocol is a set of rules enforced by the Bitcoin Network (a distributed network of computers) made by — whom exactly? Who makes the rules matters at least as much as who enforces them. Blockchain technology may provide for completely impartial rule-enforcement, but that is of little comfort if the rules themselves are changed. This rule-making is what we refer to as governance."
Bitcoin and Blockchains are an opt-in rule system. You literally subscribe to the rule set (called consensus) that you wish to participate in. No one coerces you into participating in a rule system you do not want to participate it.
Your capitalist||socialist country is invaded by socialist||capitalists and they change the rules of your country's bank? Your blockchain doesn't care, it is enforced at the user level, at the edge.
>either you follow the fork supported by the majority [...], or you run the risk of finding your coins worthless
Any thing is only worth what others will pay for it. This is the case regardless if you are using a blockchain or not. If the world suddenly decided USD were worthless and you held lots of USD, yes you would find that your USD are now worthless.
There are so many examples, from Canadian Tire Money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Tire_money to Microsoft Points https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Points showing you can create private currencies granting the bearer certain privileges without a blockchain.