Very odd statement. Bitcoin (and related cryptocurrencies) is the only way any two peers on the planet can transfer funds electronically without a trusted third party. That's a fundamental shift from what was possible before. It solves the biggest part of the problem; what's left is reputation systems to facilitate transactions between people who don't know each other personally and enabling technologies that make the whole thing more accessible to "normal" people. (Nobody is ignoring those problems, either, FWIW, but they aren't Bitcoin's to solve.)

> I'm not really sure I understand why banks would do that vs. just using social processes, since those processes still need to exist

Maybe that's where we're talking past each other. Those processes don't need to exist with Bitcoin anymore. With Bitcoin, Bob's tiny credit union in Albuquerque can transfer $100 to Alice's credit union in Thailand for free. The credit unions don't need to negotiate with anyone or depend on anyone except for each other. In fact, the credit unions don't even need to factor into the equation at all; they just provide a convenient interface for consumers to access the system (and potentially a hedge for fraud, etc). It is enormously more economically efficient than the current model. It's the difference between express post and email. (Right, leaky analogy, I get it. It's a paradigm shift, is what I'm trying to say.)