Capital One–Discover Merger Tests Bank Regulators’ Merger Approach
prospect.org
Regulators have dragged their feet on new bank merger guidelines. They now have a $35 billion reason to get moving.

For the past ~15 years I have tried for the most part to boycott:

  • American Express for being an #ALEC member (which supports #climateDenial and obstructs public healthcare, public education, immigration, gun control, etc), and for participating in the #Wikileaks donation blockade
  • Visa for pushing the #warOnCash (member of #betterThanCashAlliance.org and offering huge rewards to merchants who refuse cash), for participating in the #Wikileaks donation blockade, and for blocking Tor users from anonymously opting out of data sharing on their credit cards
  • Mastercard for pushing the #warOnCash (member of betterThanCashAlliance.org), for participating in the #Wikileaks donation blockade, and for blocking Tor users from anonymously opting out of data sharing on their credit cards

Discovercard has always been a clear lesser of evils. So Discovercard has earned the majority of my business whenever cash is not possible. But now I hear chatter that #Discovercard might merge with a shitty bank that had an embarrassing data leak by an Amazon contractor: #CapitalOne. I was disappointed when Samual Jackson promoted #CapOne. Capital One supported Trump’s Jan.6 insurrection attempt among other things.

So what’s left? JCB (Japanese) and UnionPay (China). JCB pulled out of the US like 10 years ago. People outside the US can get a #JCB card but then IIRC it uses the Discovercard network in the US and the #AmEx network in Canada.

I already favor cash whenever possible. In other cases it will be hard to choose the lesser of evils between CapOne and Mastercard.

update

Found an insightful article detailing a loophole that the fed gave to Discovercard which is why Capital One intends to buy it.

  • shortwavesurferEnglish
    2·
    8 months ago

    Have you considered peer-to-peer options such as Bisq or LocalMonero? Bisq runs all trades over tor at least.

    • debanqued@beehaw.orgOP
      1·
      8 months ago

      I installed Bisq a few years ago the 1st hurdle was buying cc required having some cc escrowed to start with. I’ve also heard that some banks are so hostile toward cryptocurrency they freeze accounts of people suspected of trading it. I got the impression Bisq transactions would be detectable by the bank but my memory is fuzzy on that. I suppose I need to use a burner bank account I don’t care about, and use a bitcoin ATM to get the escrow money. It’s a shame the Bisq escrow money can’t be in fiat money.

      • shortwavesurferEnglish
        2·
        8 months ago

        Well, with a transaction like that, you are paying a peer instead of a company. So as long as you don’t do it terribly often, you’re probably not going to get your account shut down because it won’t look suspicious. If you are trading hundreds of times per month with different people all the time, that could be a problem. You could use local Monero cash by mail because there’s not much of a fee increase for it, although it takes a while. Any online payment method you use is going to be higher fee simply because it’s easy to reverse in most cases. As an example, the common fee for a cash-by-mail transfer is 3% where the typical fee for a PayPal transfer is 10 to 15%. I go by the methodology that once I am in crypto, I stay there because in my opinion, crypto is the future and I do not want to go back to fiat currency. So I get into it and then rarely, if ever, sell any for fiat again.

        Edit: if you setup a monero wallet and paste your address I will be glad to send you some to get started. If you are a beginner, I suggest monero.com wallet, which is available on the iOS App Store, Google Play Store, or if you are very based you can use the fdroid repo https://fdroid.cakelabs.com/