Altcoins Gaining Ground On Bitcoin For Merchant Payments

While businesses are increasingly using Bitcoin for payments, a new analysis suggests that $ETH, $DOGE, and other fiat-backed stablecoins are gaining traction.

According to a Fortune story, BitPay, a cryptocurrency payment processor, claims that retailers’ use of Bitcoin has decreased to 65 percent of all completed payments, down from 92 percent in 2020.

Ethereum purchases accounted for 15% of the total, while stable coin purchases accounted for 13%. In 2021, newcomers to BitPay, such as Dogecoin, Shiba Inu, and Litecoin, were responsible for 3% of all payments, according to the research.

The report claims that crypto investors may have been reluctant to spend Bitcoin due to its massive price gain in 2021, instead opting for less volatile altcoins and stable coins. BitPay said that Bitcoin spenders primarily used their wealth on luxury goods, such as jewelry, watches, cars, and boats.

Conclusion

According to BitPay’s Chief Executive Officer Stephen Pair, luxury goods transaction volumes increased to 31% in 2021, up from 9% the year before. The platform’s overall payment volume increased by 57% year over year.

While Pair admitted that BitPay’s business “ebbs and flows” with the price of the cryptocurrency to some extent, he claimed that the current drop has yet to produce a major change in volume. He believes the platform’s increasing reliability is due to the fact that “more and more companies” are using BitPay to make payments.

Read More: Bitcoin’s Price Pullback Could Be Start of ‘Crypto Winter’, Says Swiss Investment Bank UBS