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And yet in the modern world there's tens of them. There was no single winner, and why would we want one? I've never heard anyone advocate for merging VisaNet wi
by arcticbull 4y ago
And yet in the modern world there's tens of them. There was no single winner, and why would we want one? I've never heard anyone advocate for merging VisaNet with the Mastercard network with the Discover network with the UnionPay network with the Swift network with the EFTPOS network with the Interac network.
This sounds like... centralization.
- Geee 4y agoThose are payment networks, not base layer protocols.
- arcticbull 4y agoSame thing. They're private protocols. People build on top of VisaNet you know. There's this company, Stripe, you may have heard of it.
- Geee 4y agoNot same thing.
- arcticbull 4y agoPlease explain clearly where you think the delta is.
- Geee 4y agoIn layered systems, there's a hierarchy of layers. Bitcoin is a layer 1 money protocol. Visa is level 8 (not literally), i.e. it is built on top of layers upon layers, which are built on top of US dollar and even that might not be the base layer yet. If we were in a gold standard, gold would be the base layer for US dollar, and the systems on top of it. Layered systems tend to naturally converge into a single base layer, and the higher layers are more sprawling and dynamic.
- arcticbull 4y agoBitcoin is built on top of several other layers too, the community has just arbitrarily called it 'L1', that's not the point. Thanks, though.