Centralized payment systems like PayPal and Mastercard/Visa are still considered “modern”, but are actually aging. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is in its infancy and growth phase: not for nothing is PayPal looking to integrate the king of cryptos into its payment network. Is the tipping point near?
PayPal is, in fact, already overtaken by Bitcoin
With its digital wallet system based solely on holding state currencies (dollar, euro,…), the fear for the PayPal company to completely miss out on cryptocurrencies had become too great. So, a little over a year ago, PayPal announced the addition of Bitcoin (BTC) for its (initially American) users.
And it was high time for the payment company, because a recent report published by Blockdata shows that the Bitcoin network has already surpassed PayPal’s, at least in one area.
In terms of the volume of value processed on the Bitcoin network, the quarterly average for the year 2021 currently stands at $489 billion processed over 3 months. A value that now far exceeds the volumes processed by PayPal, which average $302 billion per quarter in 2021.
Mastercard in Bitcoin’s crosshairs?
The Visa and Mastercard bank card networks still have a pretty clear lead over the Bitcoin contender for now.
Mastercard actually processed $1.8 trillion in value per quarter in 2021, while Visa averaged $3.2 trillion.
Still, Blockdata analysts are quite optimistic about the future and growth of the Bitcoin network. Between the best case and worst case scenarios, they estimate that the BTC network could overtake Mastercard’s between 2026 and… 2060 all the same.
Blockdata’s teams detail the 3 major factors that will allow Bitcoin to surpass Mastercard:
- A number of transactions that increases, especially with second layer solutions, or possible optimizations as was able to be SegWit for example ;
- The average amount of bitcoin sent per transaction is increasing, especially with the massive arrival of institutional investors;
- The price of bitcoin increasing, which – even without changing the two factors above – would mechanically increase the value of the volumes processed.
As Blockdata says very well, it is already impressive to see how Bitcoin has managed (in only 12 years) to accomplish 27% of the path made by Mastercard, which was founded in 1966. One of the only major obstacles standing in Bitcoin’s way now is the regulatory threat, still wielded by too many politicians.
