- Bitcoin has processed more dollar volume than PayPal so far this year.
- The peer-to-peer network transacted around $489 billion per quarter on average in 2021, while PayPal amounted to $302 billion.
- But Mastercard and Visa still process more money than Bitcoin.
The Bitcoin network processed 62% more value in dollars than PayPal this year, according to a report by Blockdata. The firm also analyzed the volume transacted in the Mastercard and Visa networks. Although Bitcoin currently lags behind the credit card firms, the report explored possible paths for the peer-to-peer (P2P) network to overtake them.
So far this year, Bitcoin transacted an estimated average of $489 billion per quarter, whereas PayPal amounted to an average of $302 billion. Mastercard and Visa, on the other hand, still lead the pack with $1.8 trillion and $3.2 trillion processed per quarter on average, respectively.
The processed volumes of different payment networks compared. Source: Blockdata.
“It’s impressive how Bitcoin, as a 12 year old decentralized network, is 27% of the way in terms of one metric (volume processed) compared to Mastercard, a company founded in 1966,” per the report. “Especially when you take into account that this is a decentralized movement.”
Bitcoin needs to increase its dollar processing volume by 260% to level with Mastercard and 540% to reach Visa. Although these are significant increases, the growing awareness and usage of BTC paired with ongoing developments in its ecosystem could lead the P2P network to process more dollar value in the future.
“All of the publicly available statistics, such as the number of nodes in the Lightning Network, the number of channels between these nodes and the amount of bitcoin in these channels, are growing at an exponential rate,” the report said. “If they continue to do so over the next decades, it is entirely possible that the Bitcoin network will process as many, or substantially more transactions than some of the other financial networks do.”