I like how providing an incredibly efficient payment network is framed as holding progress back.

I'd frame it as making the standards for competition very high.

I don't see people getting super ideological about their inability to create monocrystaline turbine blades or 2nm semiconductors in their garages. Why payment networks? Because computers? The overall network is way more complicated than a specific technological system or clever open standards document.

These networks would be usurped if someone could actually come up with a better system. The economy insists upon it constantly.