Comment by raffraffraff

14 days ago

> Creating a viable alternative to Visa and Mastercard requires “several billion euros” in investment, according to EPI’s own estimates. Low interchange fees under EU regulation make profitability difficult.

I think it's absolutely amazing that "crypto" (from bitcoins to shitcoins) have turned out to be no more useful as a currency than chips from the local casino. This has damaged their ability to function as a simple currency that can be used to pay for goods and services. And they have damaged the reputation of the whole distributed ledger technology to the point where, in 2026, banks aren't even considering implementing a closed circuit inter-bank distributed ledger as a way to send euro from one bank account to another. If the digital currency in this closed system was actual euro, there would be no reason to speculate on its value and turn the whole thing into a circus.