Santo Mining Corp (SANP)

[SteveWin]

Think about it this way.

"Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) operates the world's largest retail electronic payments network providing processing services and payment product platforms. This includes consumer credit, debit, prepaid and commercial payments, which are offered under the Visa, Visa Electron, Interlink and PLUS brands. Visa enjoys acceptance around the world and Visa/PLUS is one of the world's largest global ATM networks, offering cash access in local currency in more than 170 countries. Visa runs the network over which credit-card transactions run, but it doesn't issue the cards to consumers or mail out their bills."

Visa makes its money by charging its member banks, the card issuers, a small percentage fee for each transaction that runs across its network - and V makes a TON of money doing this.

The Bitcoin blockchain is an "electronic payments network" which is not owned by any single company. It was designed so that anyone with a computer (but now, to be competitive and profitable, one needs a specialized, dedicated machine, a "mining rig") can jump in and contribute processing power toward doing the work of processing electronic payments - and get paid automatically for the work their machines do. As bitcoin begins to be used for more and more transactions, these bitcoin mining companies could grow to (collectively) rival Visa in size, scope and value.