Innovation or the beginning of quasi centralised hell?
I was never very interested in federated sidechains. How far can you trust a dozen or two entities not to collude and steal funds? I'm actually pretty skeptical of all sidechains as currently conceived, from a security perspective.
But from an arbitrage perspective, it makes sense. If you're holding BTC on Exchange A and send via the blockchain to Exchange B, you're already trusting both exchanges. From that perspective, using Liquid is probably worth it for instantly credited transfers between trusted third parties.
