Legacy finance just blows my mind. I recently was given a window into how payment processing works.

A small galaxy of fees leveraged against the merchant. Some are clear, others are positively Byzantine.

Sliding rates for a variety of circumstances that represent different risk factors. Innumerable ways that the banks routing the payments can decline (and then charge additional fees).

Limits and fine print and a hundred ways that it could go wrong even if the middlemen are happy.

Final settlement taking weeks or longer. Risk of claw backs from unscrupulous users, layers up on layers of dependencies and rent seeking behavior.

I knew a lot of this stuff beforehand, on a vague general sort of way. But actually learning the detailed nuts and bolts of how all of this is structured and seeing all of this parasitism in real terms made me so incredibly thankful that Bitcoin is going to put all of these fuckers out of business, and allow value generating companies thrive.