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/If the usage is purely for encryption and not trust, why not use a self-signed cert? It would be nice if all public API nodes supported it, but yet all of them can't/won't buy wildcard SSL certs.