As the world’s biggest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin’s current annual turnover is much higher than PayPal, second only to Visa.
Some people think that due to the expansion problem, bitcoin trading speed cannot reach the transfer speed achieved by some traditional payment services.
However, in the debate over Bitcoin against PayPal, this view has no weight.
1. Transfer amount exceeds PayPal
Yassine Elmandjra, cryptocurrency analyst at ARK Invest, said that the total dollar amount of Bitcoin transfers far exceeds the payment processor PayPal’s transfer amount. The transfer amount of this top-level cryptocurrency also exceeds the transaction amount of the discovery credit card.
The New York analyst said that Bitcoin’s total transfer in 2018 was $1.3 trillion, which is only an order of magnitude worse than Visa, the leading payment processor, But far surpass the litecoin.
However, El Mandila also believes that we cannot compare Bitcoin with Visa or MasterCard because their base transfer amount is not large. But he also pointed out that comparing them is by no means an end.
However, the analyst wrote on Twitter that since 2013, the transfer of this top cryptocurrency has grown tremendously. He also provided a chart showing Visa, MasterCard, UnionPay and credit card transfer credits.
He went on to point out that in 2017, there were approximately $3 billion to $4 billion in bitcoin transfers per day. The really increased bitcoin transfer transaction is not the amount of transfer, but the total value, he tweeted:
“Attention, it is the value of the transfer, not the amount of the transfer. “
2 It is not easy to catch up with Visa
Although Bitcoin’s transfer amount will reach about $1.3 trillion by 2018, these figures are obviously insignificant compared to Visa’s records for many years.
Visa handled more than $8.9 trillion in transfers in 2016, and the dollar’s current data is about seven times the bitcoin currency.
However, the ups and downs of Bitcoin seem to have gained momentum, which means that things that seem impossible today may happen in the near future.
As far as the data from 2015 is concerned, the transfer amount of Bitcoin has grown tremendously. This top-level virtual asset reached its peak in 2017, and its transfer value increased nearly eight-fold compared to the 2016 record
Bitcoin transfers are expected to continue to grow in 2018 and beyond. If its performance matches the 80% annual growth rate of the past five years, it will challenge Visa and occupy a very favorable position.
With the implementation of the Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN), Bitcoin transfers may catch up with Visa and even surpass it in the future. By then, this leading cryptocurrency can theoretically handle more than $13 trillion in transfers per year.
3 Controversy: Value and throughput are heavy?
For many people in the currency circle, if you want to compete with companies like Visa, Bitcoin needs to find a solution to its expansion problem. However, some people believe that the original purpose of cryptocurrency is to never compare or compete with these traditional payment processors.
Is it the pursuit of higher transfer throughput, or is it only for Bitcoin to be used for high value transactions? It seems that the slow bitcoin network and huge transfer fees are not important to supporters of “value above throughput”.
The debate continues, and some in the community insist that the use of Bitcoin cannot be tied only to the transfer value and bitcoin price. This is because most transfers involving bitcoin are speculative transactions.