In defense of cryptocurrencies, I’d like to push back against the “Visa is so awesome” meme that’s afflicted Twitter this past week. This is a terrible take. 1/n
-
Show this thread
-
Visa is the absolute worst. They’re terrible. Let me put it another way: Visa is so awful *and hard to dislodge* that people developed Bitcoin in an effort to get rid of them. 2/n
14 replies 89 retweets 362 likesShow this thread -
That’s right. One of the most important functions of society has been poorly implemented that people *had to effectively re-invent cash* in an effort to replace them. 3/n
7 replies 35 retweets 197 likesShow this thread -
If you like numbers, there are better ones than transaction throughout. Take profit margin. This company, which does nothing interesting, routinely brings in 45-55% profit margins. That’s highway robbery. 4/n
19 replies 56 retweets 331 likesShow this thread -
For this service, which is trivial to provide, the card industry charges both customers and merchants enormous fees. That 3% fee infests everything we do. 5/n
24 replies 39 retweets 232 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @matthew_d_green
This is largely uninteresting because it's a lot cheaper than (insurance, armored cars, etc.) handling cash.
1 reply 0 retweets 1 like -
Replying to @RichFelker
Put this a different way. Has Visa’s share of the transaction fee gone down in proportion to any other high-availability communications service over the past two decades?
2 replies 1 retweet 1 like -
Replying to @matthew_d_green @RichFelker
Long distance calls have gone from 25 cents per minute to “who the hell can afford to meter long distance calls”. High-availability SLA servers have gone down in price by many orders of magnitude.
2 replies 1 retweet 1 like
Long-distance fee of 25¢/min is 100% of the cost of communicating with ppl far away. Txn fees are 1.5-3% of the cost of buying material goods. Former had huge demand to change. Latter is mostly irrelevant to end buyer.
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.