Well the whole enchilada at this point is precisely debating -or trolling, if you prefer- the common sense merits of a projects and the possibilities of it finally breaking the barrier and entering the mainstream of the real world. Now, from that perspective, can you tell me again what would be the advantage of a bank using this, as oppose of the private networks they already use? will they eliminate one step in the chain of events from the window to the ledger?
There are some inaccuracies here, but they've been addressed already by others. I'm going to address what I think is your main concern, that being...
"The possibilities of it finally breaking the barrier and entering the mainstream of the real world."
Here's the reality; That's already happened. There's an entire pseudo-economy in the crypto sphere worth, at a minimum, 10 billion USD, and probably a lot more given other factors involved.
Maybe you want to know when blockchain technology will have larger mainstream business applications.
Well, it already does. Consider the Russian use of NXT voting technology. Maybe you're interested in large corporate applications, like banks and multinationals.
That's an easy question to answer. Large banks won't use blockchains as we do... but they will license the technology. They'll contract the Nxt team. They'll want it adapted to their specific needs. And there's a whole bunch of reasons why these blockchains are superior compared to traditional databases as financial ledgers. But that's what they'll do. They'll license what they think is the best, most suitable technology and adapt it to their needs, and the R&D process for his selection is already going on in Banking conglomerates worldwide. You need only ask them, and plenty have been public with their testing of blockchain technologies. If you want to talk about the specific benefits of blockchains versus private databases for financial institutions, that's a different question that should be handled in a different topic.
As for the actual users of the Nxt blockchain, who will they be?
In all likelihood, they'll be entrepreneurs. They'll be small business folk. They'll be people with great ideas and fantastic talent, but without the 100 million USD to spend that these banks and states have. And they'll need a place to build their vision. Some will need cryptocurrencies. Some will need assets. Some will need an easy way to build Smart Contracts.
Ardor will provide the ecosystem for all of them. And when 1, 2, or 3 of this horde of entrepreneurial projects succeed, that's when we'll see a sudden and dramatic collision of the crypto and mainstream business worlds.
And here's the truth: I don't know which entrepreneurial project will do that job. None of us do. We don't know which tools or technologies they'll need, or how they'll use them. That's why Ardor is refining all these different applications. Ardor sets the stage for them, creates the network infrastructure, and builds every tool they could possibly need.
Then it's up to us entrepreneurs to create amazing things and disrupt the behemoths.