I think it's easy to be cynical. But one major reason I'm a believer in decentralized consensus is because I think it can make the silo'd financial systems of the world as seamlessly interoperable as the Internet made the silo'd telecommunication systems of the world.

It feels a lot like when AOL first started supporting email in 1993. It's easy to dismiss AOL and Nasdaq as highly centralized systems that don't align with the ethos of decentralization. But the other way to look at it is a previously maximally centralized system is interfacing with a decentralized one in a way that gives the users of the former slightly more freedom and the latter wider user base and legitimacy.