However, the reality seems to be different as adoption is continuing at a brisk pace as users prefer to deal directly with their counter party instead of going through a third-party payment processor.
Bitcoin leads in transaction value
Yassine Elmandira, analyst at ARK Invest, has pointed out that Bitcoin’s transaction dollar value has exceeded that of Paypal by a big margin. Furthermore, the transaction value of Bitcoin has also surpassed that of Discover credit card. The New York-based analyst has underlined that Bitcoin, which recorded transactions worth $1.30 trillion in 2018, leads Visa by “an order of magnitude.”
Elmandjra acknowledges that in terms of transaction volumes Bitcoin still lags behind Visa and MasterCard. Still, Elmandjra argues that the king of cryptocurrency has recorded extraordinary growth in transaction volumes since 2013. The graph representing the transaction volumes of Visa, MasterCard, Discover and UnionPay are shown below:
The analyst further mentioned that $3 billion to $4 billion worth Bitcoins are transacted on a daily basis in 2017. He tweeted “Look at the transaction value, NOT the transaction volume.”
Surpassing Visa is not an easy task
Bitcoin transaction volume may have risen considerably, but it is nowhere near what Visa has achieved over several years. In 2016, Visa handled more than $8.9 trillion worth of transactions, representing roughly 6x the transaction value of Bitcoin in the current year.
However, Bitcoin is gaining momentum and crypto enthusiasts are hopeful that Bitcoin would reach the level of Visa in the years to come. In 2017, Bitcoin recorded eight times the transaction value it recorded in the previous year. Theoretically, the use of Lightning Network (LN) would enable Bitcoin to handle up to $13 trillion worth transactions.