The bitcoin network has reportedly surpassed transaction volumes of payments platform PayPal. At an average $489 billion, the bitcoin network transacted $187 billion more than PayPal per quarter this year, dailyhodl.com reported quoting data by blockchain intelligence company Blockdata. PayPal processed an average of around $302 billion per quarter.

However, bitcoin’s current transaction volume per quarter is still only a fraction of the value processed by credit card companies Mastercard and Visa, Blockdata noted.

Mastercard processed an average of $1.8 trillion per quarter this year, 260 percent more than PayPal.

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“It’s impressive how bitcoin, as a 12-year-old decentralised network, is 27 percent of the way in terms of one metric (volume processed) compared to Mastercard, a company founded in 1966, especially when you take into account that this is a decentralised movement,” Blockdata said in the report.

The blockdata report makes a case for the bitcoin network beating Mastercard based on three factors -- the rise in the number of transactions, the average amount of bitcoin sent per transaction and the surge in bitcoin price.

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The bitcoin network would have to scale 260 percent to process an equivalent volume to the Mastercard network on a daily basis, and 540 percent for Visa. However, there has not been any indication that the amount of bitcoin set per transaction is rising, it said.

Alternatively, if the price of bitcoin were to rise by 260 percent, then the bitcoin network could reach Mastercard’s volume, it noted. As the rise in the price of bitcoin has been unpredictable historically, it is hard to say if it will reach this point.

According to the report, at the current growth rate, bitcoin could reach Mastercard’s volume anywhere between 2026 and 2060, taking into account that Mastercard would also be processing more transactions than today.

(Edited by : Thomas Abraham)

First Published:Dec 3, 2021 6:49 PM IST