Sure, but it requires a fork of the EMV/global platform protocols, and a technology change that obviates payment terminals. It will always exist as a legacy int

Sure, but it requires a fork of the EMV/global platform protocols, and a technology change that obviates payment terminals. It will always exist as a legacy integration, but you basically need a parallel infrastructure with better economics. An open wireless tap protocol for cryptocurrency hardware wallets would do it, and then there would have to be a delegation wallet / cash register version where you can delegate payment collection to an employee without giving them the whole bank account, and then some kind of insurance to backstop inevitable fraud, and a market for securitzing and trading the bonds for that insurance, all with transaction fees that are competitive with cards and interac. Nothing current crypto exchanges and companies can't do today. I actually foresee these becoming popular as a reaction to CBDC's and the cashlessness that will very severely marginalize people and cut them out of the economy. Further, I could see shops themselves polarizing, where just like you may not go to a McDonalds (I haven't been in one in decades), there are places you go, and places you don't, and the places that only accept govt fiat will be the places you go when you don't have a better option. It will be like going to a small town greengrocer who accepts crypto or gives credit by private arrangement repayable in crypto vs. some globalized big box store. There's a floor on how stupid and overreaching regulations can be before the economics of peoples individual risk/reward calculation switches to evading them. It's literally the mechanism behind pervasive low level corruption in authoritarian regimes, where past a point, governments themselves have invented the incentives for citizens to evade them, and created massive underground economies as a result. Worse, the state benefits from the black market money and turns a blind eye to the criminals who support it, and that's how you get places like Chicago, Baltimore, LA, and to a lesser extent, Vancouver. Yes, the duopoly will be broken, but it will be the side effect of emerging cashless society policies from some spectacularly naive policymakers.