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
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
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
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
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
All of the “interesting” non-cryptocurrency payment startups this year just add a premium (and their own fraud layer) on top of the huge fees from the card industry. 6/n
Largely to offer “innovations” that any kind of competitive card industry would have had from the beginning, like the ability to easily start a store, or send money to your friends. 7/n
The card industry routinely launches extra-legal financial blockades against legal operations that the government just dislikes. 8/n
This past couple of years the industry (finally) rolled out chip cards, but did such a terrible job that the checkout lines in *the Visa corporate cafeteria* got too long. 9/n
(That’s right, the Visa executives were so out of touch that their first realization they’d screwed up was when their own cafeteria had lines out the door.) 10/n
Anyway, to summarize. I have no idea if cryptocurrencies will ever scale to payments. But to pretend there’s no need for something like this is to miss a pretty giant, smelly elephant in the room. 11/11
