Many people believe that Bitcoin is inherently less efficient than centralized payment networks such as Visa and MasterCard. It is not . Bitcoin comparing these systems, people usually indicates that there is a lot of waste and inefficiency because there are so many nodes performing redundant work.But it is not necessary to have as many nodes validating Bitcoin transactions to work.
Bitcoin would work perfectly well if only one node was validating transactions and chain building blocks. And because of the nature of Bitcoin transactions, it is not necessary to use expensive machine learning algorithms to combat fraud (as the card networks).However, one thing to note: you have to rely on the node that performs validation. But that's no different from the confidence you have to deposit the card network operators.
To eliminate the need to rely on a single node, centralized validation, you can choose to keep your own node and make your own validation. That's a possibility you have with Bitcoin and not with the card networks. There are many nodes on the network as demand Bitcoin to validate transactions independently without relying on third parties . Yes, at the macro level it is being made much redundant work, but all that extra work has value to someone.
In BitPay for example, we keep a lot of Bitcoin nodes and are able to verify transactions without having to rely on third parties. Similarly, many individuals, organizations and service providers have their own nodes due to the value of that independence. Having a separate node reduces the risk associated with third parties. The more important andwidely used is Bitcoin, more people and businesses will have the need to carry out their own independent verification of transactions .