Bitcoin Forum

To many, Bitcoin’s shot at “real-world” utility is defined by the yardstick of Visa’s transactional throughput; yet, the original cryptocurrency now purportedly handles more annual transacted value than PayPal—and appears to be gaining on Visa, fast.

https://cryptoslate.com/bitcoin-transaction-volume-tops-paypal-creeps-up-on-visa/

So there will be a possibility that bitcoin will be utilized as a form of payment like Paypal? Well bitcoin might become like this but it doesn't mean that bitcoin does not serve its purpose of course it is still there and i think that many people now are aware of block chain technology that is why they grasp already the use of bitcoin into different applications.

it is "value" not "volume"!

in my opinion although things such as both value and volume as in how much money was transferred through bitcoin and how many transactions per second it processes are great things to achieve, there is another important matter that we should not forget...
bitcoin is the only decentralized currency that has been created. when comparing it with PayPal and Visa you are comparing apples and oranges. decentralized currency with a distributed ledger versus centralized payment processors with a database. they are not even comparable.

A fun wee figure but meaningless. Much of that 'value' will be coins moving between wallets owned by the same person or to and from exchanges. There are very few actual transactions taking place. It's primarily movement.

If we could boil down the figures to numbers that exactly matched how Paypal was used I don't think anyone would be shouting about it.

Well it shows for sure there is a lot of movement of bitcoin, trading obviously plays a
big part as most other currencies are traded against bitcoin.

Fortunately or unfortunately which ever way you want to look at it, it means spending
probably hasnt overtaken the "investment" useage of bitcoin.

That's a great news. Bitcoin is the most potential coin in the cryptocurrency market and it has huge possibilities in future. By appearing on Visa, it is going to get more public attention and more exposure.

This the testimony of the fact that in future bitcoin will also be used for the payment system as well as it will rule and dominate the world’s economy and transaction systems. Such thing will add value to the market but the main function of the bitcoin will remain intact.

This will not affect the main function of the BTC. This proves that bitcoin is getting more and more popular. Bitcoin will be the leader in the transaction processing system in future and by this it will be a powerful crypto currency in the world.

You might be right but if we check the volumes on exchanges, those don't indicate coins moved from a wallet to another, they indicate actual transactions, and both the volume and the value is quite high. At the same time I don't take this information for granted and I know Bitcoin still has some road ahead until it is used as widely as Paypal is. Unfortunately, Bitcoin is mainly being traded on exchanges, while almost every online shop uses paypal.

Seems unbelievable, so I clicked out of curiosity. It identifies in the first paragraph that it is talking about transaction value, NOT transaction volume.

Does not matter what happens in the future with BTC, such as if it will be the dominating coin in the market or that it will change the face of the economy for good or that it will rule the economy, in the end BTC will be BTC. And its function will never be compromised.

Well, people use bitcoin to make transaction to move to another address for various reasons. But that doesn’t mean that the BTC doesn’t serve its purposes. Bitcoin is still in its service. People know how block chain technology works and thus people are now using the BTC into different sectors or applications.

On top of that, the idea of "transaction value" really doesn't mean much if the analysis doesn't account for change addresses. Most transactions involve change.

Let's say I use "Input A (0.5 BTC)" to pay "Address A" 0.01 BTC and "Change address B" 0.49 BTC. When you look that transaction up on Blocktrail, the "value" is 0.5 BTC, even though only 0.01 BTC changed hands. It's meaningless.

i don't know how Blocktrail does things since i have never checked it out but most of the explorers "guess" the change and exclude it. it usually is not that hard to do since change is for most transactions either
- too obvious back to the same address
- smaller
- a brand new address
- final output
and even if you don't, the difference is not that huge. maybe 10 or 20% lower. still the value transferred through bitcoin every day is huge.

what I see here, the obvious difference between bitcoin and paypal is, transaction time. bitcoin can be faster than paypal. even bitcoin only takes 1 hour when paypal must take up to 4 days. obviously it makes people switch to bitcoin and the volume of bitcoin transactions increases beating paypal.

I agree. By design and structure alone, bitcoin is better than paypal. If this is just movement of coins as others are pointing out, that's still something. It means there's a growing number of bitcoin users out there. Sooner than later, bitcoin will be the chosen mode of payment/transactions because of speed, accuracy and lower costs.

I will be so happy when that POS Paypal finally dies for good.  Glad to see Bitcoin stomping on it right now and we are just getting started. 

btc prices never settle at a certain value, so many stores have not been able to transact using bitcoin, but I believe there will be a program or planning like that in the future

it is not "defined" that way, having a TPS close to Visa is only one of the many goals. the main goal of bitcoin has always been being a decentralized payment system not a payment system to compete with Visa or have fastest TPS possible.
however with Lightning Network we are already achieving that and far beyond that. so it is not just the value of the total transactions made daily. we are already capable of a lot faster and more transactions.

This is good, right? I really want bitcoin to beat PayPal. haha.... I mean sure, PayPal was convenient for a while, but now that we know how much money we can save with bitcoin transactions, I cannot wait for the day bitcoin officially becomes a digital currency. It will turn out cheaper, faster and way more convenient for all of us.

Of course this is good! However, this article is talking about the value of money transacted with the Bitcoin network, not the number of transactions in total. There is a very important distinction there. Unfortunately, for Bitcoin to truly compete with visa, it will need to handle an equivalent amount of transactions per second (TPS). Visa can handle around 3000 TPS and Bitcoin can handle only about 7 TPS. So this article is actually talking about the amount of money transacted with Bitcoin. The good news is that the lightning network will allow us to completely blow visa out of the water! Bitcoin continues to grow and make milestones, with a massive amount of value transacted and not to mention the insanely high hash rate! Future is looking very bullish, hodl!

Wow this is awesome to hear. Although prices now might now be so attractive but this is a milestone that we should celebrate. This only proves that the spirit of bitcoin and cryptos are not dying so we should not lose hope.

Bitcoin is used to make transactions from one address to another address for various reasons. But even if doing other transactions BTC is still serving its purpose. People are now using the BTC into different applications as they know the process of block chain technology.

In order to transact from one address to another for different reasons Bitcoin is used. But that absolutely doesn’t mean that the Bitcoin is not serving its purpose, it’s doing so! As people know about the block chain now, they now are using the BTC for different applications!

I think bitcoin will surpass visa soon. And from my opinion bitcoin can be a very good alternative for paypal. The transactions are faster and safe so i think more people are going to join in future.

This is not the way we measure the efficiency or something like that. These are just values. Not all of them are real and unique transactions. So we should not compare them in this case.

I don't think we can compare bitcoin with paypal or visa. They are completely different from bitcoin. The vision, working process, etc nothing is similar. So it's quite hard to replace paypal.

the possibility will always emerge in the future bitcoin will be more developed again and all depends on the investor itself

It already is digital currency and you can freely use it as such. The only problem is the lack of merchants accepting it.

Either way, it will be a long time before Bitcoin can be a true Paypal alternative. The Lightning Network is supposed to make it possible, but it's still in Beta and has a long way to go. For a more apt comparison, we should only be looking at Bitcoin transactions that were used for payments, and the only numbers of that sort that are tracked are the numbers processed by Bitcoin payment processors. Even that won't be entirely accurate because it doesn't account for peer-to-peer transactions.

As far I know the much of the value move through the wallet that own by the similar person. A few transaction happen till now. If you find out we will see the actual transaction of paypal. Whatever the number It’s a positive things I believe.

They should add all of crypto as bitcoin is a bit slow and clunky at the moment. Other altcoins are quicker and better so if they add monero and other dark market coins it will definitely go above paypal and visa.

Bitcoin, as assumed, will take the place of Gold sooner or later. BTC is being used as a value and sometimes as an exchange, but it was, is and will be as "resource" and a worthy investment. Time will sing the song.

So this might show all the shady people making enormous transactions, as well as gambling transactions.  IF PayPal is somewhat close to bitcoin transactions, they must make a lot of money.  I hope that sooner or later bitcon and other coins are accepted everywhere online.

You got the point exactly. With the transaction time cut off, many would prefer to make payment for services rendered with Bitcoin for speedy payment without much delay or having to submit queries to support. Bitcoin no doubt is taking iver the world.

Although prices can now be very attractive, this is an important milestone that we should celebrate. Bitcoin is used for transactions from one address to another for different reasons. When people know about chain blocking now, they are currently using BTC for different applications! The transaction is faster and safer so I think many will join in the future.

I'm sure, PayPal is convenient for a while, but now we know how much money we can save with bitcoin transactions, I can not wait for official bitcoin to become a digital coin. Wow is great to hear. This only demonstrates that the spirit of bitcoin and cryptos is not dead so we should not lose hope. But even when doing other transactions, BTC is still serving its purpose.

Isn't this should be obvious considering the fact that there is billions of amount of bitcoins held by the people of crypto community and most of them transact it from one address to other ? Or am I missing some info here ?
Anyway it is good to know that the volume is more than paypal and visa. This gives us a hope that Bitcoin might some day become a real world utility and might be legally used all over the world.

I'm sure, PayPal is convenient for a while, but now we know how much money we can save with bitcoin transactions, I can not wait for official bitcoin to become a digital coin. Although prices can now be very attractive, this is an important milestone that we should celebrate. This only demonstrates that the spirit of bitcoin and cryptos is not dead so we should not lose hope. But even when doing other transactions, BTC is still serving its purpose. Bitcoin is used for transactions from one address to another for different reasons. When people know about chain blocking now, they are currently using BTC for different applications!

Bitcoin is open for improvement and upgradable. Sooner or later there will be another fork to address that issue. It may not be today because we cannot rush everything and it needs more trial to make sure the security will not be compromise.

Bitcoin as a mode of payment  is far better  than most of  the payment methods that we have. I think bitcoin would replace PayPal anytime soon, I believe bitcoin is doing amazing well, I think bitcoin and PayPal can coexist as methods of payment. Personally I prefer bitcoin to PayPal since bitcoin is widely accepted in many parts of the world.

It will be good if bitcoin and Paypal can collabs and together make some payment, or maybe Paypal add bitcoin as their payment system so we can use it to pay safely in a lot of merchant like paypal.

This is great news, PayPal should start accepting Bitcoins or any other cryptocurrencies as a form of funding your balance as many other wallets are starting to do so. And Visa,  Mastercard  & American Express and the other financial companies should do something like a credit card or debit card funded with bitcoins that would be nice that too.  Perhaps they have already plans for this but I guess we have to wait and see

This is a good news for BTC users and it's community it is proving how fast it is growing. The only thing which disappoints is government should legalize this, still in many countries they have banned this and say it as illegal. This is technology is developed only to avoid third party transactions and to benefit the public. 

A lot of people will use different currency instead with faster transaction times. This means crypto has probably already surpassed visa and the bull run hasn't even started yet

STATISTICS, you shuld look closely at them beofre jumping to conculsions.

Most of Bitcoin txs are done because of speculation not buying goods
This is about volume not tx amount, and tx amount matters because small online and off line purchases is where we spend our money on daily basis.

This I agree and it's only a matter of time before they surpass visa's transactions,Bitcoin is still in adoption period and we are growing fast once it totally becomes mainstream it will even double the transactions of visas and Paypal combined the volume can easily tell that to us.

From what I see, more and more people use bitcoin as a payment tool. Paypal and Credit Card are old-fashioned, it's time we switch to bitcoin.

in my opinion although things such as both value and volume as in how much money was transferred through bitcoin and how many transactions per second it processes are great things to achieve, there is another important matter that we should not forget...
bitcoin is the only decentralized currency that has been created. when comparing it with PayPal and Visa you are comparing apples and oranges. decentralized currency with a distributed ledger versus centralized payment processors with a database. they are not even comparable.

Bitcoin is the strongest decentralized currency and bitcoin challange various kinds of rejections from parties like goverments and bank. They try to block adoption of bitcoin the world economy and development of new ways that can be applied transaction and payment. But they have limited control on bitcoin and they only cause some fluctuations on its price.

This is like a very narrow view, cryptos are long way of bring adopted especially in physical stores because current payment options are just more easy to implement than cryptos.
i havent seen any place with crypto POS, I would love to see that.