Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sure sounds like a lot. But "billions" is less than a /64. Try "sextillions" (/56) or "septillions" (/48). Of course, when the denominator is "undecillions", it becomes clear that this is actually a non-issue.
ARIN recently handed out a /16 allocation to Capital One. That is one 65,025th of all of IPv6. A reasonable sized /32 allocation would have allowed for giving every ATM they operate worldwide its own globally routable /48.
The more one digs, the more egregious it seems. If the NETIFY webpage is accurate, it shows that Capital One already had "/32" and "/36" blocks, and yet they also got "/16" : https://www.netify.ai/resources/networks/capital-one
And if I'm reading the ARIN fees correctly, it only costs $4000 annually for a "/16" allocation: https://www.arin.net/resources/fees/fee_schedule/
There doesn't seem to be any public transparency of the approval process to explain how a non-ISP company could justify a "/16" block so it just leaves everybody guessing.
John Sweeting from ARIN only confirmed that the "/16" was allocated to Capital One according to policy but he didn't elaborate on the rationale: https://www.mail-archive.com/arin-tech-discuss@arin.net/msg0...
Example reddit discussion : https://old.reddit.com/r/ipv6/comments/17yuqvp/til_capital_o...