I'd be interested in finding out to what extent bitcoins are actually being used in the real world for transactions like the one you made in your first comment (the cargo container of sneakers, or similar large $ transactions between companies using different reserve currencies). What is the level of growth in bitcoins being used for actual large transactions? If there are real-world savings in time and costs, I'd suppose that it will prove itself by becoming the preferred method of making large transfers of funds. If that doesn't happen, it would mean that either there were unforeseen negative factors (high costs to convert to/from bitcoins from your usual currency, for example), or the benefits weren't as great as anticipated. For example, maybe the transfer costs of the 5-8% you suggest are not truly at that level. Without any experience to base the opinion on, 5-8% just strikes me as awfully high for transactions between two reserve currencies. Would that mean that somebody is making 5-8% on the entire $500 trillion of Chinese exports to the US last year, plus 5-8% of the $130 trillion we sold to them? The level of real-world usage would be a way of measuring the actual value added by bitcoin in comparison to what was used before bitcoin. If it produces real value for companies, they'll use it, and bitcoins will hold their market value based on utility. If tens of trillions of dollars were being raked off the top of the entire global trade by the banks making transfers in reserve currencies, the businesses affected would be the ones excited about bitcoins, instead of millennials excited about something for no better reason than that it is new.
Personally, I doubt that there really is much real-world value added. I think the majority of the current price is there because of speculation. Greed will drive up prices past where the intrinsic value says it should be, and fear can drive it back down below it's intrinsic value. And at this point, what the real intrinsic value properly should be seems to be nothing more than a wild guess. I've been wrong about a lot of stuff before in my lifetime though, so I could very well be wrong again.
I was a Corporate Senior VP at a top 20 bank. We dealt with wire transfers and international stuff every day.
Big banks are building their own private blockchain for exactly this purpose. But they want them to be used by their customers only. The banks are very concerned about the tech biting into their profits.
Of course they are going to do nothing but call it a scam.
You keep looking for the process to produce something. That is not how this works. I guess you could say it produces efficiency.