Adherents of the traditional financial world rarely think heavens of virtual money. The cyber assets often get criticized for their volatile nature and speculation around them, especially, when it comes to bitcoin. For instance, the Bank of America once called the latter “the greatest bubble in history,” whereas Nouriel Roubini, known as "Dr. Doom" roasted bitcoin by saying it couldn’t serve either as a serious payment method or like means for capital storage.
Nevertheless, lots of users get benefits from using cryptos for various purposes, including the ones mentioned above. Nowadays, more and more services and places accept digital coins for anything from coffee to pizzas.
Our top trading bots
So what is that cyber coin which is most useful as money? According to Simon Chandler’s Global Cryptocurrency Benchmarking Study by Cambridge University, released in April 2017, 86% of crypto-payment businesses use BTC as their top payment option in international remittances. The latter include cross-border money transfers as well as business-to-business payments and many more. Apart from this, lots of companies all over the world practice charging their customers with cryptos.
At the same time, some nations even promote the use of cyber money for payments. For instance, in South Korea, where lots of crypto-enthusiasts dwell, the largest crypto-bourse Bithumb has been dealing with WeMakePrice and Yeogi Eottae. The former and the latter will get a chance to accept payments in:
- BTC
- ETH
- XRP
- BCH
- ICX
- And others
Moreover, in the US some states have been thinking of allowing citizens to pay their taxes and other fees in cyber coins. For example, in May in Arizona, there was passed a bill suggesting people could pay taxes in BTC, LTC or any other digital currency. Meantime, in Georgia and Illinois, earlier this year such laws haven’t been passed. However, the opposite move could have moved cryptos forward, writes Chandler.
Coins Which Are Breathing Down Bitcoin’s Neck
Even though bitcoin is a predominant leader, it is hard to say that it’s going to be the absolute one in the future. Bitcoin is already having problems with the scalability problem. Without its long-anticipated Lightning Network, bitcoin can process no more than seven transactions per seven. By contrast, the American multinational financial service Visa can do 24,000.
Because of scalability issues, the Bank of International Settlements even had to release a report stating that cryptos (especially POW coins like BTC) couldn’t be used as money in the world’s economy.
Thus, other cryptos have a chance to beat BTC. In the article, Chandler names such bitcoin’s rivals as Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, Ripple, and Ethereum.
People Keep Adopting Cryptos
The author concludes that despite that fact that bitcoin has lots of flaws it is still can be considered as real money, as well as its thought rivals – altcoins. This can be proved by the fact that both of them are getting wider adoption with time.
According to Bach Nguyen of SatoshiLabs in 2017, there were 9,085 venues registered with Coinmap, whereas right now there are 12,801 venues. It means there have appeared 3,716 in the span of one year, yet it is not the full picture as there are many more companies that use cyber coins in the world.
