"Man who benefits enormously from status quo worried about change"
There are plenty of use-cases where using crypto can be a better alternative for merchants (no risk of fraud and chargebacks) and consumers (micropayments where the cost of CC processing is higher than the cost of fraud, or purchases where the payee values privacy above all else - think "Ashley Madison" subscribers who'd rather not have their names on the site)
https://www.moderntreasury.com/learn/what-is-fednow
https://frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/community/...
https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/08/31/fednow-the-federa...
Anyway, even FedNow is not enough. Europe has SEPA, Brazil has Pix. India has NPCI... and yet, they still haven't solved the side for micropayments and transactions still can be reversed and are not anonymous.
Perhaps you use some sort of fiat tumbler like privacy.com enabled for instant payments, where the merchant doesn't know who you are, but the money transmitter will still be required to keep records of the transaction and have a license.
(disclosure: i work in risk/compliance at a fintech)
Still, crypto could be used for the payment and KYC be done through other means.
That's a feature. I have no idea why people think irreversible transactions are a desirable feature. It's like a credit card where you're responsible for all charges, even if your card was stolen.
So:
1. Bad for consumers (who merchants also are).
2. Bad for people who make mistakes.
3. Good for merchants-as-merchants, including unscrupulous ones.
4. Good for thieves.
Reversible transactions come at a cost. There are times when the cost of the insurance from the transactions being reversible is higher than the cost of the transaction itself. For those times, it would be very desirable to have a way for irreversible transactions.
(Also, please read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31463534 before continuing with any other false dichotomies. I am tired of "playing the tape" in regards to crypto discussions)
The big issue is in finding out the upsides and the downsides of each of these choices, and who should pay for the consequences if the actions backfire. This is why we should ask for those analysts to actually put some Skin in the Game.
I'd rather have an expert saying "I am so convinced of my opinion that I'm willing to risk facing ruin over it" than some academic guiding the implementation of key policies as large-scale experiments, where the population has no other choice but "trust the experts" and see these very same experts walking away scot-free when their ideas blows up in the face of reality.