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I imagine it has to do with the difficulty of financial compliance. Musk was part of PayPal which has gotten into trouble before for being not quite a bank and

I imagine it has to do with the difficulty of financial compliance. Musk was part of PayPal which has gotten into trouble before for being not quite a bank and attempting to do bank-like things.

bryanlarsen 2y ago
Yes, it's hard. That's the point. Visa is a monopoly that makes monopoly sized profits. (Visa's $20B of income is misleading, that's tiny compared to the profit the banks issuing Visa cards make). If Musk could crack the Visa monopoly X.com would be worth a lot more than the $44B he paid for it. He's the richest man in the world because his companies do hard things. Landing a rocket on a barge bobbing in the ocean is difficult. Tesla not being on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_manufacturers_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_man... is difficult. Sending 280 character messages across the internet is not difficult in comparison. Breaking the Visa monopoly, OTOH...
- bobthepanda 2y ago
  Financial payments is a cartel wherever you go. In China it's not better, it's just different players; AliPay and WePay. In fact UnionPay is probably more of a cartel since it's the only card authorizer in China. A couple of companies have tried their hand at a western mega-app, most notably Meta, and you could consider Apple close, but for the most part the consumers are not super interested.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    And X wants to join the list of cartels, not to break them.
- hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
  >Breaking the Visa monopoly, OTOH... Musk has consistently pushed his companies into higher risk acceptance and financed those moon-shots to deliver a product that had a demand but not a supply (reusable rockets, electric cars, low-orbit internet satellite network). Also the tunnel thing, neuralink, and a handful of other smaller and less successful gambits. I don't see him having the same benefits tackling financial transactions. There are already multiple players with significant regulatory capture, significant centralization, on top of established reputations.

I imagine it has to do with the difficulty of financial compliance. Musk was part of PayPal which has gotten into trouble before for being not quite a bank and attempting to do bank-like things.

bryanlarsen 2y ago

Yes, it's hard. That's the point. Visa is a monopoly that makes monopoly sized profits. (Visa's $20B of income is misleading, that's tiny compared to the profit the banks issuing Visa cards make). If Musk could crack the Visa monopoly X.com would be worth a lot more than the $44B he paid for it. He's the richest man in the world because his companies do hard things. Landing a rocket on a barge bobbing in the ocean is difficult. Tesla not being on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_manufacturers_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_automobile_man... is difficult. Sending 280 character messages across the internet is not difficult in comparison. Breaking the Visa monopoly, OTOH...

bobthepanda 2y ago
Financial payments is a cartel wherever you go. In China it's not better, it's just different players; AliPay and WePay. In fact UnionPay is probably more of a cartel since it's the only card authorizer in China. A couple of companies have tried their hand at a western mega-app, most notably Meta, and you could consider Apple close, but for the most part the consumers are not super interested.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  And X wants to join the list of cartels, not to break them.
hmmm-i-wonder 2y ago
>Breaking the Visa monopoly, OTOH... Musk has consistently pushed his companies into higher risk acceptance and financed those moon-shots to deliver a product that had a demand but not a supply (reusable rockets, electric cars, low-orbit internet satellite network). Also the tunnel thing, neuralink, and a handful of other smaller and less successful gambits. I don't see him having the same benefits tackling financial transactions. There are already multiple players with significant regulatory capture, significant centralization, on top of established reputations.