Right now. But what happens when WU decides to do what Strike is doing. They can run this in parallel to their current infrastructure. Jack has stated very clearly that WU would do things cheaper if they could, but they cant due to the physical legacy infrastructure needed to maintain their business.

That is why it is a race. There is no reason at all WU cannot get in on this and eventually fully migrate their infrastructure. Anyone that thinks its not possible has never seen a mega corp rip its infra apart and practically start over - I have.

So yeah, it's cheaper for now, but the only way Strike can have a monopoly at this is to have clear and strong first mover advantage. They have it now, but it is not clear or strong. Even if so, it is unclear why Strike having a monopoly is a good thing, and also unclear what the advantage is if other companies will be able to do the same thing.

Bitcoiners are only positive that Strike will be successful because Jack says its difficult for other companies to compete with this, but I would be interested to find out how accurate that really is. I don't really see it being accurate from a perspective of resources alone. All these companies could operate at a loss for decades just to extinguish Strike out of the market and corner all this stuff for themselves.