what if incumbent payment networks like VISA and MasterCard won't get disrupted by AI and crypto but instead will co-opt it? i see glimpses of this happening already.

they have the brand, trust & reputation and are able to piggyback on the efforts of stablecoins and blockchains.

they are sitting on massive amounts of highly contextualised proprietary data. this is fuel for AI value creation processes.

regulators are likely to force companies to use regulated, KYC/AML compliant rails if agentic economy takes off (right now it's insignificant).

reversibility and insurance matter more, not less, in the age of hallucinating autonomous shopping assistants.

food for thought.