[twoparachute45]

There's no mandatory price hike required. Thunderbolt is royalty-free as of several years ago, and at this point USB4 pretty much _is_, at minimum, Thunderbolt 3. For example USB4 hubs are, per spec, required to be TB3 compatible, so I don't know why we would bother marketing them as "USB4 v1.0 / USB4 SuperSpeed++ / USB4 20 Gbps / USB 3.1 Gen2x2" when instead they can just be marketed as Thunderbolt 3 or 4.

[wkat4242]

True but due to lack of slow speed fallback it requires active signal conditioning electronics in every cable and the required interfaces on the client side are also way more expensive in peripherals. A simple mouse would cost $100 instead of $10 for no reason, it'll never need thunderbolt speeds.