Chamath Palihapitiya confidently says that the famous blockchain platform Solana will break up the dominance of giant payment gateways in global transactions. The billionaire made this statement during a weekend episode of the “All-In Podcast,”.
Palihapitiya added that Visa and Mastercard plan to raise the fees many large merchants pay when accepting shoppers’ credit cards this month.
“Visa and Mastercard, I think, are doing the single dumbest thing they could do by being a duopoly, which is raising prices, especially into an inflationary moment, which just lacks complete knowledge and sensitivity of the moment,” He said.
Solana Pay to Cause Massive Disruption
He noted that the price hike could be an opportunity for other payment projects like Solana to take advantage of the disruptions.
“This week, I was able to see a little bit under the hood of Solana Pay, and that’s really exciting,” Palihapitiya said. “So it’s all coming, I think. It’s like a swarm of activity to dismantle these payments businesses.”
Solana Pay is a decentralised peer-to-peer payments protocol that launched in February, and it is no surprise that the billionaire investor has high hopes for the project.
Palihapitiya mentioned, “The core premise behind Solana Pay is that the payment and underlying technology goes from being a necessary service utility to true peer-to-peer communication channel between the merchant and consumer.”
Palihapitiya has previously spoken out against Visa and Mastercard, calling them a “completely contrived duopoly that doesn’t need to exist.” He said in December that they would be the most major business failure in 2022, predicting that they would lose out to emerging blockchain projects.
About Solana
The Solana blockchain was launched in 2019 and has developed into one of the top blockchains in the crypto space. One of its most beneficial features is that it can process many transactions at low fees. In addition, thanks to its proof-of-stake protocol, it’s believed to be more environment-friendly than other blockchain technologies.
Furthermore, the market value of Solana’s native token, SOL, is $34 billion, and it is the seventh-largest cryptocurrency, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
In January, analysts from Bank of America noted that Solana could take market share away from Ethereum because of its low transaction fees, ease of use, and scalability relative to other cryptocurrencies.
