opticalcarrier, thank you for carrying the torch on the SSL issue.

As Marcus03 pointed out, "Technically, there is nothing that needs to be protected. The transaction data that is sent from clients to nodes, is the same data that is exchanged between nodes, which themselves do not uses SSL.
Or in other words, the beauty of the implementation lies in the fact that no trust is needed. It can't get any better. Putting SSL on top of it, for me just hides the beauty."

However, in the case of an NXT client operating from behind the firewall of a crypto (freedom) unfriendly nationstate, the mere fact that transactions are transmitted "in the clear" provides easy detection ability that a cryptocurrency transaction occurred. I know that if the primary goal was profit at the core operation level of the Nxt network, SSL would not be considered. The socio-political definitions of what is acceptable to particular jurisdictions is likely to change often in the coming years, and I think that providing maximum security and the ability to maintain plausible deniability to end users is a strategic advantage to Nxt.

The transaction may be secure by design and will succeed, but what good is that if the originator of the transaction runs afoul of misguided local crypto regulations? I don't know if this helps or not: https://www.cacert.org/