> And why does this trust cost so much? Take payment cards like VISA. Max, they cost 1-1.5%. There's not much to save there. Sure, it would be cheaper if I paid

> And why does this trust cost so much? Take payment cards like VISA. Max, they cost 1-1.5%. There's not much to save there. Sure, it would be cheaper if I paid 0.01%, but the cost is already low enough that it's not really preventing any transactions. This is an important point that very few in the bitcoin community have bothered to investigate. Credit card fees are even lower than the 1-1.5% you speculate. As credit companies increased their efficiency with technology they didn't lower the fees, but spent the extra profit on marketing in the form of rewards cards and cashback, which shifts money from retailers to card holders. Since vendors compensate by raising prices, that actually means that they redistribute money from people who pay cash or debit to those who use reward cards. There have been class action lawsuits in Canada and the US over this recently. In Australia they took an administrative approach and capped interchange fees at 0.5% in 2003 and the result was that rewards cards went away.[1] The credit card companies still made profits. Meanwhile, real transaction costs in Bitcoin are enormous, but instead of being transparent are currently handled via seigniorage through the currently relatively high inflation of the bitcoin supply (rewards to miners). As that is reduced and finally dries up Bitcoin transactions will require large fees. Either that or miners will exit the business and the whole system will collapse since it isn't designed to handle reductions in difficulty. 50% attacks will be easy to carry out, or trust of central authority will be even more important than it is now with the already tiny number of professional miners controlling the network. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee#Australia_and_New_Zealand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee#Australia_and_...