Well, you asked for an opinion and I told you how it is.
I make markets in cryptos amongst many other markets and I'm more or less in the middle of the stuff you are denying.
And if you don't believe that, you are free to send an email to Jane Street or Flow Traders which are authorized counterparties for the VanEck ETN that basically trades like an ETF.
With regards to your remittance business...do you really think that a wire is settled instantly just because it shows up after a couple of seconds in your online account???
I'm not sure what you think I'm denying?
Let's talk about the specific example you raise, since you bring it up, arbing the NAV of VacEck ETNs against the underlying crypto. I'll assume you're a real MM so you're an Authorized Participant in the context of the ETN meaning you can redeem (if you're not then you're even more at risk). This example brings up exactly the kind of situations the OP raised.
An ETN is not an ETF. That means a few important things when it comes to risk if you carefully read the prospectus. For example, you're counting on the ability to redeem if the price exceeds NAV, that's fundamental to it being an arb. Except "The Issuer’s ability to pay to the holder of a Note any amounts due in respect of such Note is entirely dependent on the success in realisation of the Series Assets for the respective Series.", meaning if they can't sell the crypto assets backing the shares you redeem for the calculated redemption price, you don't get that price. And then there's the part where VanEck can suspend redemptions "in its absolute discretion" during what it considers adverse market conditions. And of course, they get to create new series or not at their discretion. If you take a look at other ETNs that stopped creating new units, they can instantly balloon to huge premiums to NAV. And to top it all off, although the ETNs are backed by crypto, in reality ETN noteholders are still just unsecured creditors of VanEck.
So a whole pile of risks here, a chunk of it due to the fact that none of this is even nearly instantaneous like the traditional type of arb the OP contrasted with crypto. This is an even worse case because it appears VanEck doesn't deliver you the actual crypto when you do a redemption like an ETF would do with a stock basket, so you can't even enter arb with the crypto itself as one leg like you do with arb'ing SPY redemption units, for example.
As far as the wiring funds... If I wire in $5M to an account, it shows up in the account, and then I wire out a bunch of transactions that total up to $5M and they're processed immediately and show up in the recipient bank account immediately, then yes, the wire was settled instantly. If you don't consider the ability to use money received immediately, including irrevocably wiring it to a third party account as "settled" then I guess you're got your own definition of that word? This isn't your retail online banking portal you use for your personal or small business account, these are treasury management systems which are a whole different universe from what you may have experience with. As I indicated originally, the reality for retail folks is much different from institutional products, same in trading or banking. If you've experienced using a treasury management service at a major bank and not seeing more or less instantaneous wire transfers we'd all love to hear what bank that was? If you've never used a treasury management product, then again, its very unclear what you're trying to accomplish here, do you even know?
