5 ms·

How many orders of magnitude more is the number of transactions supported by the existing financial system? Visa alone can process 24,000 transactions per seco

by sumeno 3y ago

How many orders of magnitude more is the number of transactions supported by the existing financial system? Visa alone can process 24,000 transactions per second. Bitcoin can handle 7

happytiger 3y ago
I’m just answering the question. Not trying to start a war. I do think it’s important to have healthy alternative financial systems. Probably need a more energy efficient one.
- sumeno 3y ago
  But it's not an alternative to the financial system, outside of crime in order to do anything useful with it you have to move it back into the existing financial system.
  - happytiger 3y ago
    I literally just answered the question about energy use. Crypto could arguably become a potential alternative financial system. Bitcoin by itself is not. Crime is primarily conducted in USD (by volume). The purpose of financial compliance is not to eliminate crime but to manage it, and arguably the techniques we have used to create exclusionary financial systems have done more harm than good (better the terrorist you know in your financial system than the terrorist who doesn’t even use your financial system that you don’t have any awareness of, aka. The Patriot Act missed the mark). Further, the existing system is working about as well as the war on drugs. Every recommendation I have read is to find ways to shore it up, rather than find new ways to conduct financial crimes oversight, and the primary recommendation for the resulting inevitable escalation is to build a gigantic skynet of information sharing that looks an awful lot like surveillance capitalism. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/nl/Documents/financial-services/deloitte-nl-fsi-the-effectiveness-of-financial-crime-management.pdf https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/nl/Documents/... I personally view Bitcoin as a runaway proof-of-concept. It’s rather insane how successful it’s become considering how it got started. If we look at it from a product / market fit perspective, there is clearly a product / market fit. And that’s in the face of the intact existing financial system, Visa’s volume, the USD, etc. That’s probably a point worth considering.
- acdha 3y ago
  Cryptocurrency is a speculative gamble, not an alternative financial system. There’s no path to real world adoption without better cost, performance, fraud control or customer service[1] but the changes needed to deliver negate the concept. 1. Not saying that banks are great here, but that better isn’t an impossibly high bar.
  - happytiger 3y ago
    Fiat currency is a speculative gamble, and controlled by a specious and small number of players. You could have said the same thing about it the early financial system as well. What you have is a developed ecosystem and a developing ecosystem, and you’re pointing to the developed ecosystem and saying the developing one doesn’t have all the things. Of course it doesn’t. It’s developing. And it’s doing it in spite of the existing financial system trying to damage or destroy it periodically. Let’s not confuse the technology innovation we’re referring for the mature ecosystem of a graduated and dominant financial ecosystem.
    - acdha 3y ago
      > You could have said the same thing about it the early financial system as well. Only if you have no understanding of what the words mean. For example, most cryptocurrencies are fiat currencies - just exceptionally weak ones. The reason why using USD isn’t a gamble is that it’s linked to a massive economy with guaranteed demand. > Of course it doesn’t. It’s developing. And it’s doing it in spite of the existing financial system trying to damage or destroy it periodically. Ah, yes, this part of the sales pitch was bound to come up. The flaws I described aren’t some sort of minor growing pains, they’re architectural. After 15 years and billions of dollars, not having a progress towards fixing them suggests that telling people to ignore them and buy in anyway is not the way you fix design defects.
      - happytiger 3y ago
        1) Sigh. These arguments are far too ideologically generated. 2) There are many “cryptos” and technologies. Crypto is not a homogeneous system. Fiats all suck: even ones I implemented as crypto or digital currencies or whatever terminology one would want to use. 3) I think you have it out for crypto. I’m not a hype person or a crypto advocate, but I like the idea of decentralized financial systems and believe we have had very little innovation in the space (and need more). 4) Technology waves take 20-40 years to reach maturity. Radio. Television. Internet. They all take a lot longer than people realize. 5) There has been plenty of progress. If you want to be closed to that progress and dig your feet in to defending the existing system, that’s fine. But the idea that there hasn’t been “progress in 15 years” is absurd reasoning.
0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
Are these Visa numbers published somewhere? The scale and must-not-fail nature of this infrastructure would be an interesting read to understand how they have built out the platform. Probably all sorts of lessons learned that only apply to a global financial network, but still probably some universal truths.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- happytiger 3y ago
  https://ycharts.com/indicators/visa_inc_v_total_transaction_volume_quarterly#:~:text=Visa%20Inc%20(V)%20%2D%20Total%20Transaction%20Volume%20is%20at%20a,7.57%25%20from%20one%20year%20ago https://ycharts.com/indicators/visa_inc_v_total_transaction_.... Their volume is impressive.
gshubert17 3y ago
A Visa fact sheet [0] claims 276 billion transactions in a 12-month period, which would be less than 9,000 per second, but still an impressive figure. Fedwire, the settlement system operated by the Federal Reserve, processed 196 million settlements in 2022, each about $5.4 million, for a total of over $1,000 trillion. [1] That would be about 16 settlements per second. Visa handles many more smaller, individual transactions; aggregates and nets them; and uses Fedwire to settle them between member banks. Bitcoin could be used in a similar manner, handling a relatively small number of larger settlements; leaving other systems to handle smaller, individual transactions. [0] https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/about-visa/documents/aboutvisafactsheet.pdf https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/about-visa/documents/ab... [1] https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/wires/volume-value-stats/annual-stats.html https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/wir...
- acdha 3y ago
  > Bitcoin could be used in a similar manner, handling a relatively small number of larger settlements; leaving other systems to handle smaller, individual transactions. That’s what Lightning does but it also removes most of the sales pitch for the system since you’re giving up the global ledger. Once you’re relying on a bank in all but name for your transactions, it’s unclear what you’re getting for the extra cost and lower usability.

by sumeno 3y ago

How many orders of magnitude more is the number of transactions supported by the existing financial system? Visa alone can process 24,000 transactions per second. Bitcoin can handle 7

happytiger 3y ago

I’m just answering the question. Not trying to start a war. I do think it’s important to have healthy alternative financial systems. Probably need a more energy efficient one.

sumeno 3y ago
But it's not an alternative to the financial system, outside of crime in order to do anything useful with it you have to move it back into the existing financial system.
- happytiger 3y ago
  I literally just answered the question about energy use. Crypto could arguably become a potential alternative financial system. Bitcoin by itself is not. Crime is primarily conducted in USD (by volume). The purpose of financial compliance is not to eliminate crime but to manage it, and arguably the techniques we have used to create exclusionary financial systems have done more harm than good (better the terrorist you know in your financial system than the terrorist who doesn’t even use your financial system that you don’t have any awareness of, aka. The Patriot Act missed the mark). Further, the existing system is working about as well as the war on drugs. Every recommendation I have read is to find ways to shore it up, rather than find new ways to conduct financial crimes oversight, and the primary recommendation for the resulting inevitable escalation is to build a gigantic skynet of information sharing that looks an awful lot like surveillance capitalism. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/nl/Documents/financial-services/deloitte-nl-fsi-the-effectiveness-of-financial-crime-management.pdf https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/nl/Documents/... I personally view Bitcoin as a runaway proof-of-concept. It’s rather insane how successful it’s become considering how it got started. If we look at it from a product / market fit perspective, there is clearly a product / market fit. And that’s in the face of the intact existing financial system, Visa’s volume, the USD, etc. That’s probably a point worth considering.
acdha 3y ago
Cryptocurrency is a speculative gamble, not an alternative financial system. There’s no path to real world adoption without better cost, performance, fraud control or customer service[1] but the changes needed to deliver negate the concept. 1. Not saying that banks are great here, but that better isn’t an impossibly high bar.
- happytiger 3y ago
  Fiat currency is a speculative gamble, and controlled by a specious and small number of players. You could have said the same thing about it the early financial system as well. What you have is a developed ecosystem and a developing ecosystem, and you’re pointing to the developed ecosystem and saying the developing one doesn’t have all the things. Of course it doesn’t. It’s developing. And it’s doing it in spite of the existing financial system trying to damage or destroy it periodically. Let’s not confuse the technology innovation we’re referring for the mature ecosystem of a graduated and dominant financial ecosystem.
  - acdha 3y ago
    > You could have said the same thing about it the early financial system as well. Only if you have no understanding of what the words mean. For example, most cryptocurrencies are fiat currencies - just exceptionally weak ones. The reason why using USD isn’t a gamble is that it’s linked to a massive economy with guaranteed demand. > Of course it doesn’t. It’s developing. And it’s doing it in spite of the existing financial system trying to damage or destroy it periodically. Ah, yes, this part of the sales pitch was bound to come up. The flaws I described aren’t some sort of minor growing pains, they’re architectural. After 15 years and billions of dollars, not having a progress towards fixing them suggests that telling people to ignore them and buy in anyway is not the way you fix design defects.
    - happytiger 3y ago
      1) Sigh. These arguments are far too ideologically generated. 2) There are many “cryptos” and technologies. Crypto is not a homogeneous system. Fiats all suck: even ones I implemented as crypto or digital currencies or whatever terminology one would want to use. 3) I think you have it out for crypto. I’m not a hype person or a crypto advocate, but I like the idea of decentralized financial systems and believe we have had very little innovation in the space (and need more). 4) Technology waves take 20-40 years to reach maturity. Radio. Television. Internet. They all take a lot longer than people realize. 5) There has been plenty of progress. If you want to be closed to that progress and dig your feet in to defending the existing system, that’s fine. But the idea that there hasn’t been “progress in 15 years” is absurd reasoning.

0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago

Are these Visa numbers published somewhere? The scale and must-not-fail nature of this infrastructure would be an interesting read to understand how they have built out the platform. Probably all sorts of lessons learned that only apply to a global financial network, but still probably some universal truths.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
happytiger 3y ago
https://ycharts.com/indicators/visa_inc_v_total_transaction_volume_quarterly#:~:text=Visa%20Inc%20(V)%20%2D%20Total%20Transaction%20Volume%20is%20at%20a,7.57%25%20from%20one%20year%20ago https://ycharts.com/indicators/visa_inc_v_total_transaction_.... Their volume is impressive.

gshubert17 3y ago

A Visa fact sheet [0] claims 276 billion transactions in a 12-month period, which would be less than 9,000 per second, but still an impressive figure. Fedwire, the settlement system operated by the Federal Reserve, processed 196 million settlements in 2022, each about $5.4 million, for a total of over $1,000 trillion. [1] That would be about 16 settlements per second. Visa handles many more smaller, individual transactions; aggregates and nets them; and uses Fedwire to settle them between member banks. Bitcoin could be used in a similar manner, handling a relatively small number of larger settlements; leaving other systems to handle smaller, individual transactions. [0] https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/about-visa/documents/aboutvisafactsheet.pdf https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/global/about-visa/documents/ab... [1] https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/wires/volume-value-stats/annual-stats.html https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/wir...

acdha 3y ago
> Bitcoin could be used in a similar manner, handling a relatively small number of larger settlements; leaving other systems to handle smaller, individual transactions. That’s what Lightning does but it also removes most of the sales pitch for the system since you’re giving up the global ledger. Once you’re relying on a bank in all but name for your transactions, it’s unclear what you’re getting for the extra cost and lower usability.