Rails Race
Send money from A to B and watch how each rail actually moves it. Same amount, same destination, wildly different speed and cost. This is the layer I spend my days in.
Joburg to Cape Town. Same money, four rails.
Illustrative typical figures, not quotes. Rails, fees, and timing vary by provider, amount, and cut-off. The point is the shape of the gap, not the decimals.
Why this matters
Most people experience money as one thing: it either arrives or it does not. Underneath, it is many different rails, each with its own clock and its own toll. A card authorises in a second but the merchant waits days to actually get paid. An instant rail clears in seconds and is final the moment it lands.
Cross-border is where the gap turns brutal. A traditional wire can take the better part of a week and quietly skim a few percent on the spread, while the same value can move on-chain in minutes for cents. None of this is exotic. It is just usually invisible, and the invisibility is exactly what lets the slow, expensive options survive. Make the rails visible and the choices get obvious fast.