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I profoundly disagree. You may very well be right about the majority of that money servicing large corporations, but bear in mind that we're talking about a po

I profoundly disagree. You may very well be right about the majority of that money servicing large corporations, but bear in mind that we're talking about a pot of money the size of Jupiter here. Payment processing alone is worth somewhere in the region of 1trillion USD annually. And that's just for moving money i.e. shuffling rows around databases. Bitcoin, while definitely imperfect, offers the hope of innovating this whole industry into oblivion and replacing it with something entirely autonomous. The insurance industry is worth another ~5trillion USD annually. The name of the game here, of course, is predictive analysis and I'd bet that my Netflix recommendations are more accurate than any assessment any insurance company has ever made of me. I think you'd have diversification up the wazoo in extremely short order. Edit: accuracy

tptacek 11y ago
Payment processing alone is worth somewhere in the region of 6trillion USD annually This seems unlikely. Is this a top-line number? Why aren't existing VISA/MC processors the largest companies in the economy? The number you just gave is orders of magnitude higher than Apple's profits. A couple minutes Google searching suggests that being a card issuer puts you in a relatively low-margin business with absolutely enormous network effects.
- lorddoig 11y ago
  It's a number I found some time ago that on further investigation appears to be quite wrong as you say. It seems it's closer to 1tn USD annually, which would rank around number 16 in world GDP tables. Edit because HN isn't allowing a reply: these numbers are industry revenue, not profit. https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/financial_institutions_pricing_global_payments_2014_capturing_next_level_value/ http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?order=wbapi_data_value_2013+wbapi_data_value+wbapi_data_value-last&sort=desc
  - tptacek 11y ago
    That huge number also does not square with the 2014 profits of the largest issuers. Look at Amex and Discover, both of which have relatively pure issuer/payment processing businesses.
    - lorddoig 11y ago
      Now it decides I can reply. It's revenue, not profit, because I'm coming at this from the perspective of money (potentially) wasted. It's all in the first link.

tptacek 11y ago

Payment processing alone is worth somewhere in the region of 6trillion USD annually This seems unlikely. Is this a top-line number? Why aren't existing VISA/MC processors the largest companies in the economy? The number you just gave is orders of magnitude higher than Apple's profits. A couple minutes Google searching suggests that being a card issuer puts you in a relatively low-margin business with absolutely enormous network effects.

lorddoig 11y ago
It's a number I found some time ago that on further investigation appears to be quite wrong as you say. It seems it's closer to 1tn USD annually, which would rank around number 16 in world GDP tables. Edit because HN isn't allowing a reply: these numbers are industry revenue, not profit. https://www.bcgperspectives.com/content/articles/financial_institutions_pricing_global_payments_2014_capturing_next_level_value/ http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?order=wbapi_data_value_2013+wbapi_data_value+wbapi_data_value-last&sort=desc
- tptacek 11y ago
  That huge number also does not square with the 2014 profits of the largest issuers. Look at Amex and Discover, both of which have relatively pure issuer/payment processing businesses.
  - lorddoig 11y ago
    Now it decides I can reply. It's revenue, not profit, because I'm coming at this from the perspective of money (potentially) wasted. It's all in the first link.