There's a reason every decentralized system eventually finds its way onto a platform: platforms solve real-world problems that platform users struggle to solve for themselves.
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There's a reason every decentralized system eventually finds its way onto a platform: platforms solve real-world problems that platform users struggle to solve for themselves.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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@pluralistic oh im early to a Doctorow thread
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That's the value of platforms. The *danger* of platforms is when they grow so powerful that they usurp the relationship between the parties they are supposed to be facilitating, locking them in and then extracting value from them (someone should coin a word to describe this process!):
Everyone needs platforms: writers, social media users, people looking for a romantic partner. What's more, the *world* needs platforms.
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Say you want to connect all 200+ countries on Earth with high-speed fiber lines; you can run a cable from each country to every other country (about 21,000 cables, many of them expensively draped across the ocean floor), or you can pick one country (preferably one with both Atlantic and Pacific coasts) and run all your cables there, and then interconnect them.
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Say you want to connect all 200+ countries on Earth with high-speed fiber lines; you can run a cable from each country to every other country (about 21,000 cables, many of them expensively draped across the ocean floor), or you can pick one country (preferably one with both Atlantic and Pacific coasts) and run all your cables there, and then interconnect them.
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That's America, the world's global fiber hub. The problem is, America isn't just a platform for fiber interconnections - it's a Great Power that uses its position at the center of the world's fiber networks to surveil and disrupt the world's communications networks:
That's a classic enshittification move on a geopolitical scale. It's not the only one America's made, either.
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That's America, the world's global fiber hub. The problem is, America isn't just a platform for fiber interconnections - it's a Great Power that uses its position at the center of the world's fiber networks to surveil and disrupt the world's communications networks:
That's a classic enshittification move on a geopolitical scale. It's not the only one America's made, either.
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Consider the US dollar. The dollar is to global commerce what America's fiber head-ends are to the world's data network: a site of essential, (nominally) neutral interchange that is actually a weapon that the US uses to gain advantage over its allies and to punish its enemies:
The world's also got about 200 currencies. For parties in one country to trade with those in another country, the buyer needs to possess a currency the seller can readily spend.
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Consider the US dollar. The dollar is to global commerce what America's fiber head-ends are to the world's data network: a site of essential, (nominally) neutral interchange that is actually a weapon that the US uses to gain advantage over its allies and to punish its enemies:
The world's also got about 200 currencies. For parties in one country to trade with those in another country, the buyer needs to possess a currency the seller can readily spend.
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The problem is that setting up 21,000 pairwise exchange markets from every currency to every other currency is expensive and cumbersome - traders would have to amass reserves of hundreds of rarely used currencies, or they would have to construct long, brittle, expensive, high-risk chains that convert, say, Thai baht into Icelandic kroner to Brazilian reals and finally into Costa Rican colones.
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The problem is that setting up 21,000 pairwise exchange markets from every currency to every other currency is expensive and cumbersome - traders would have to amass reserves of hundreds of rarely used currencies, or they would have to construct long, brittle, expensive, high-risk chains that convert, say, Thai baht into Icelandic kroner to Brazilian reals and finally into Costa Rican colones.
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Thanks to a bunch of complicated maneuvers following World War II, the world settled on the US dollar as its currency platform. Most important international transactions use "dollar clearing" (where goods are priced in USD irrespective of their country of origin) and buyers need only find someone who will convert their currency to dollars in order to buy food, oil, and other essentials.
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Thanks to a bunch of complicated maneuvers following World War II, the world settled on the US dollar as its currency platform. Most important international transactions use "dollar clearing" (where goods are priced in USD irrespective of their country of origin) and buyers need only find someone who will convert their currency to dollars in order to buy food, oil, and other essentials.
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There are two problems with this system. The first is that America has never treated the dollar as a neutral platform; rather, American leaders have found subtle, deniable ways to use "dollar dominance" to further America's geopolitical agenda, at the expense of other dollar users (you know, "enshittification").
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There are two problems with this system. The first is that America has never treated the dollar as a neutral platform; rather, American leaders have found subtle, deniable ways to use "dollar dominance" to further America's geopolitical agenda, at the expense of other dollar users (you know, "enshittification").
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The other problem is that America has become steadily *less* deniable and subtle in these machinations, finding all kinds of "exceptional circumstances" to use the dollar against dollar users:
America's unabashed dollar weaponization has been getting worse for years, but under Trump, the weaponized dollar has come to constitute an existential risk to the rest of the world, sending them scrambling for alternatives.
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@pluralistic oh im early to a Doctorow thread
@pluralistic I love that you write your essay out first then chop it up for Mastodon.
I write a thread on mastodon then edit it for my blog. I'm not sure that's the most efficient way to do it.
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The other problem is that America has become steadily *less* deniable and subtle in these machinations, finding all kinds of "exceptional circumstances" to use the dollar against dollar users:
America's unabashed dollar weaponization has been getting worse for years, but under Trump, the weaponized dollar has come to constitute an existential risk to the rest of the world, sending them scrambling for alternatives.
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As November Kelly says, Trump inherited a poker game that was rigged in his favor, but he still flipped over the table because he resents having to pretend to play at all:
Once Trump tried to steal Greenland, it became apparent that the downsides of the dollar far outweigh its upsides.
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As November Kelly says, Trump inherited a poker game that was rigged in his favor, but he still flipped over the table because he resents having to pretend to play at all:
Once Trump tried to steal Greenland, it became apparent that the downsides of the dollar far outweigh its upsides.
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Last month, Christine Lagarde (president of the European Central Bank) made a public announcement on a radio show that Europe "urgently" needed to build its own payment system to avoid the American payment duopoly, Visa/Mastercard:
Can Europe free itself from Visa/Mastercard?
Europeans are dependent on American payment systems for their day-to-day commerce. What would happen if they suddenly didn't work? Christine Lagarde says a European payment system is urgently needed.
(davekeating.substack.com)
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Last month, Christine Lagarde (president of the European Central Bank) made a public announcement on a radio show that Europe "urgently" needed to build its own payment system to avoid the American payment duopoly, Visa/Mastercard:
Can Europe free itself from Visa/Mastercard?
Europeans are dependent on American payment systems for their day-to-day commerce. What would happen if they suddenly didn't work? Christine Lagarde says a European payment system is urgently needed.
(davekeating.substack.com)
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Now, there's plenty of reasons to want to avoid Visa/Mastercard, starting with cost: the companies have raised their prices by more than 40% since the pandemic started (needless to say, updating database entries has not gotten 40% more expensive since 2020). This allows two American companies to impose a tax on the entire global economy, collecting swipe fees and other commissions on $24t worth of the world's transactions every year:
Europe’s Banks are launching new product to break the Visa/Mastercard dominance
The largest banks in the European Union have been quietly developing a new payment system that aims to give customers the option to abandon their Visa (NYSE:V) and Mastercard (NYSE:MA) cards, Bloombers News reported on Friday. Known as Wero, this initiative is currently being rolled out across much of Western Europe, supported by 16 major banks and payment processors, including BNP Paribas (OTC:BNPQY) SA, Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE:DB), and Worldline SA, the report added. While this may seem straightforward, successfully implementing Wero could result in losses for Visa and Mastercard, potentially costing them billions in fees from European merchants every time a consumer uses their cards.
Yahoo Finance (finance.yahoo.com)
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Now, there's plenty of reasons to want to avoid Visa/Mastercard, starting with cost: the companies have raised their prices by more than 40% since the pandemic started (needless to say, updating database entries has not gotten 40% more expensive since 2020). This allows two American companies to impose a tax on the entire global economy, collecting swipe fees and other commissions on $24t worth of the world's transactions every year:
Europe’s Banks are launching new product to break the Visa/Mastercard dominance
The largest banks in the European Union have been quietly developing a new payment system that aims to give customers the option to abandon their Visa (NYSE:V) and Mastercard (NYSE:MA) cards, Bloombers News reported on Friday. Known as Wero, this initiative is currently being rolled out across much of Western Europe, supported by 16 major banks and payment processors, including BNP Paribas (OTC:BNPQY) SA, Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE:DB), and Worldline SA, the report added. While this may seem straightforward, successfully implementing Wero could result in losses for Visa and Mastercard, potentially costing them billions in fees from European merchants every time a consumer uses their cards.
Yahoo Finance (finance.yahoo.com)
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But there's another reason to get shut of Visa/Mastercard: Trump controls them. He can order them to cut off payment processing for any individual or institution that displeases him. He's already done this to punish the International Criminal Court for issuing a genocide arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, and against a Brazilian judge for finding against the criminal dictator Jair Bolsonaro (Trump also threatened to have the judge in Bolsonaro's case assassinated).
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But there's another reason to get shut of Visa/Mastercard: Trump controls them. He can order them to cut off payment processing for any individual or institution that displeases him. He's already done this to punish the International Criminal Court for issuing a genocide arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu, and against a Brazilian judge for finding against the criminal dictator Jair Bolsonaro (Trump also threatened to have the judge in Bolsonaro's case assassinated).
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What's more, Visa/Mastercard have a record of billions (trillions?) of retail transactions taking place between non-Americans, which Trump's officials can access for surveillance purposes, or just to conduct commercial espionage to benefit American firms as a loyalty bonus for the companies that buy the most $TRUMP coins.
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What's more, Visa/Mastercard have a record of billions (trillions?) of retail transactions taking place between non-Americans, which Trump's officials can access for surveillance purposes, or just to conduct commercial espionage to benefit American firms as a loyalty bonus for the companies that buy the most $TRUMP coins.
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Two days after Lagarde's radio announcement, 13 European countries announced the formation of "EuroPA," an alliance that will facilitate regionwide transactions that bypass American payment processors (as well as Chinese processors like Alipay):
As *European Business Magazine* points out, EuroPA is the latest in a succession of attempts to build a European payments network:
Europe's $24 Trillion Breakup With Visa and Mastercard
A 130-million-user payment system backed by 16 major banks just launched to challenge Visa/mastercard
European Business Magazine (europeanbusinessmagazine.com)
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Two days after Lagarde's radio announcement, 13 European countries announced the formation of "EuroPA," an alliance that will facilitate regionwide transactions that bypass American payment processors (as well as Chinese processors like Alipay):
As *European Business Magazine* points out, EuroPA is the latest in a succession of attempts to build a European payments network:
Europe's $24 Trillion Breakup With Visa and Mastercard
A 130-million-user payment system backed by 16 major banks just launched to challenge Visa/mastercard
European Business Magazine (europeanbusinessmagazine.com)
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There's Wero, a 2024 launch from the 16-country European Payments Initiative, which currently boasts 47m users and 1,100 banks in Belgium, France and Germany, who've spent €7.5b through the network:
Europe’s Banks are launching new product to break the Visa/Mastercard dominance
The largest banks in the European Union have been quietly developing a new payment system that aims to give customers the option to abandon their Visa (NYSE:V) and Mastercard (NYSE:MA) cards, Bloombers News reported on Friday. Known as Wero, this initiative is currently being rolled out across much of Western Europe, supported by 16 major banks and payment processors, including BNP Paribas (OTC:BNPQY) SA, Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE:DB), and Worldline SA, the report added. While this may seem straightforward, successfully implementing Wero could result in losses for Visa and Mastercard, potentially costing them billions in fees from European merchants every time a consumer uses their cards.
Yahoo Finance (finance.yahoo.com)
Wero launched as a peer-to-peer payment system that used phone numbers as identifiers, but it expanded into retail at the end of last year, with several large retailers (such as Lidl) signing on to accept Wero payments.
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There's Wero, a 2024 launch from the 16-country European Payments Initiative, which currently boasts 47m users and 1,100 banks in Belgium, France and Germany, who've spent €7.5b through the network:
Europe’s Banks are launching new product to break the Visa/Mastercard dominance
The largest banks in the European Union have been quietly developing a new payment system that aims to give customers the option to abandon their Visa (NYSE:V) and Mastercard (NYSE:MA) cards, Bloombers News reported on Friday. Known as Wero, this initiative is currently being rolled out across much of Western Europe, supported by 16 major banks and payment processors, including BNP Paribas (OTC:BNPQY) SA, Deutsche Bank AG (NYSE:DB), and Worldline SA, the report added. While this may seem straightforward, successfully implementing Wero could result in losses for Visa and Mastercard, potentially costing them billions in fees from European merchants every time a consumer uses their cards.
Yahoo Finance (finance.yahoo.com)
Wero launched as a peer-to-peer payment system that used phone numbers as identifiers, but it expanded into retail at the end of last year, with several large retailers (such as Lidl) signing on to accept Wero payments.
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Last week, Wero announced an alliance with EuroPA, making another 130m people eligible to use the service, which now covers 72% of the EU and Norway. They're rolling out international peer-to-peer payments in 2026, and retail/ecommerce payments in 2027.
These successes are all the more notable for the failures they follow, like Monnet (born 2008, died 2012).
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Last week, Wero announced an alliance with EuroPA, making another 130m people eligible to use the service, which now covers 72% of the EU and Norway. They're rolling out international peer-to-peer payments in 2026, and retail/ecommerce payments in 2027.
These successes are all the more notable for the failures they follow, like Monnet (born 2008, died 2012).
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Even EPI has limped along since its founding, only finding new vigor on the heels of Trump threatening EU member states with force if he wasn't given Greenland.
As *EBM* writes, earlier efforts to build a regional payment processor foundered due to infighting among national payment processors within the EU, who jealously guarded their turf and compulsively ratfucked one another. This left Visa/Mastercard as the best (and often sole) means of conducting cross-border commerce.
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Even EPI has limped along since its founding, only finding new vigor on the heels of Trump threatening EU member states with force if he wasn't given Greenland.
As *EBM* writes, earlier efforts to build a regional payment processor foundered due to infighting among national payment processors within the EU, who jealously guarded their turf and compulsively ratfucked one another. This left Visa/Mastercard as the best (and often sole) means of conducting cross-border commerce.
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This produced a "network effect" for Visa/Mastercard: since so many Europeans had an American credit card in their wallets, EU merchants had to support them; and since so many EU merchants supported Visa/Mastercard, Europeans had to carry them in their wallets.
Network effects are pernicious, but not insurmountable. The EU attacks this problem from multiple angles - not just EuroPA, but also through the creation of the Digital Euro, a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
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This produced a "network effect" for Visa/Mastercard: since so many Europeans had an American credit card in their wallets, EU merchants had to support them; and since so many EU merchants supported Visa/Mastercard, Europeans had to carry them in their wallets.
Network effects are pernicious, but not insurmountable. The EU attacks this problem from multiple angles - not just EuroPA, but also through the creation of the Digital Euro, a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
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Essentially, this would give any European who signs up an account with the ECB, the federal bank of the Eurozone. Then, using an app or a website, any two Digital Euro customers could transfer funds to one another using the bank's own ledgers, instantaneously and at zero cost.
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