[Qasaur]

>The free market in my country has produced two banks that provide banking to 80% of the population (6M people).

I don't want to assume where you are from, but almost every developed country has incredibly complex, expensive, and insurmountable bank licensing procedures which make it impossible for startups to compete. That is not a free market, it is a crony capitalist market which shields incumbents.

[rvense]

That's probably true but we also have like two major supermarket chains, so I think it's hard to make the case that government regulation is the only cause of monopolies.

[nickff]

The USA actually has a history of disallowing large, centralized private banks. So-called unit-banking, driven by a powerful small-bank lobby created a great deal of instability in the 19th and 20th centuries. Canada and Scotland have a history of much freer banking than the USA. This is a very interesting subject, and I highly recommend reading a bit about it.