Altcoin is rapidly emerging instead of Bitcoin. While the share of Bitcoin’s use decreased last year, payments for Ethereum, StableCoin, and other coins such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu increased. In response to this phenomenon, virtual currency payment processing companies diagnosed that the use of Altcoin and others is increasing in international payment settlements.
Bloomberg News reported that the proportion of Bitcoin in the cryptocurrency payment and settlement market last year sharply decreased and Altcoin emerged instead.
According to data from Bitpay, a virtual currency payment processing company, Bitcoin’s share of use in stores using Bitpay stood at 65 percent last year, down 27 percentage points from 92 percent a year earlier.
Ethereum accounted for 15% of virtual currency payment payments last year and stablecoins accounted for 13%, respectively. Dogecoin, Shibainu, and LiteCoin also accounted for 3% of virtual currency payments last year.
Bloomberg explained that the increase in the proportion of Altcoin is due to the growing use of StableCoins for international payment in business. In addition, Stable Coin is fixed in value in legal currencies such as the dollar, so investors often move to stablecoin at a time when the value of virtual currency declines overall.
In addition, Bloomberg added that investors may have tried to keep Bitcoin rather than use it for payment because Bitcoin rose 60% last year.
According to Bitpay, investors mainly used virtual currency to buy luxury goods such as jewelry and watches, cars, boats, and gold. As a result, the proportion of transactions related to luxury goods in virtual currency surged from 9% in 2020 to 31% last year.
The amount of virtual currency payments processed by Bitpay last year increased by 57%. Bitpay handles about 66,000 transactions per month on average. This is insignificant compared to 206 billion credit card payments handled by Visa in the fiscal year ending June 30 last year.
“Our business is fluctuating due to fluctuations in virtual currency prices, but transactions have not decreased as much as the recent decline in virtual currency prices,” said Stephen Fair, CEO of Bitpay. “This is probably because more and more companies need to use virtual currency as a means of payment.”
