Gurley contrasts stablecoins' instant penny transfers with traditional credit cards' two-plus percent fees.
“If you have a Coinbase account, you can put your money in a USDC stablecoin and earn 4%. And within seconds immediately transfer money to someone else for pennies.”
Gurley says China's instant transfers enabled Alibaba and Tencent to build wallets used for everything from street vendors to cars.
“In China, because they had this digital immediate transfer, Alibaba and Tencent were able to very quickly build digital wallets that people carry around.”
Gurley describes how China's digital payment system lets people pay for everything via QR codes.
“You scan a QR code, like, at a you check out of a restaurant. Like, can just pay at your table. There's a QR code on the table.”
Gurley cites UK, China, India, and Brazil all created instant digital payment systems years ago.
“The UK created something called Faster Payment seventeen years ago. And China has one and India has one. Brazil created one seven years ago, six years ago called PIX that's wildly successful.”
Gurley says with crypto wallets you can send $25,000 in two seconds for two cents.
“And now if you have a wallet of any kind and I have a wallet of any kind, I can send you, you know, 25,000 US dollars in two seconds, and it'll cost me 2¢ to send it to”
Gurley contrasts US payment friction with instant settlement systems in Brazil, UK, China, and India.
“Your ACH takes three days to settle. Your wire costs $25 for domestic, $50 for international, and you have to fill out pages and pages exactly.”
Gurley criticizes Trump administration investigating Brazil's PIX for undercutting Visa and Apple.
“As part of its aggressive economic and political campaign against Brazil is investigating PICS, accusing the payment system of unfairly utter undercutting US financial and technology companies like Visa and Apple.”
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“I mean, that's the most absurd thing I've ever heard. Undercutting Visa? Like, do do they realize they have Visa and Mastercard have, like, the top two operating incomes in the history of American business?”
Gurley calls investigation of Brazil's PIX for undercutting Visa absurd given Visa and Mastercard's record operating incomes.
“I mean, that's the most absurd thing I've ever heard. Undercutting Visa? Like, do do they realize they have Visa and Mastercard have, like, the top two operating incomes in the history of American business?”
Gurley says Visa and Mastercard have the highest operating margins in North American markets.
“And there's another fact that you should know in North America, which is Visa and Mastercard have the two highest operating margin percentages in our markets total.”
Gurley criticizes banks for maintaining slow ACH settlement times for thirty years to protect themselves.
“I these banks made a huge mistake, which is they've sat on their hands with ACH for thirty years, and they did it for all the wrong reasons.”
Gurley argues banks deliberately kept ACH slow for thirty years to protect themselves while other countries mandated faster payments.
“They did it to protect themselves, like, three days to settle a transaction. There are other countries that just mandated UK faster payments.”