Can Bitcoin realistically power all online transactions in the near future?

[SPIDERMAN008]

I think the use of Bitcoin will increase in all sections in the future. Since Bitcoin gives freedom, a person can use it in any way. The adoption of Bitcoin does not mean that everyone will hold it or use it for transactions. What I understand by the adoption of Bitcoin is that the use of Bitcoin will continue to be used in parallel with fiat currency.

Now suppose a shop owner is holding Bitcoin and he regularly buys Bitcoin. Meanwhile, a customer who has hodl Bitcoin for many years, now he is using frequently. So if that customer wants to buy something by making a Bitcoin transaction with the shopkeeper who has invested in Bitcoin, I think that the shopkeeper will definitely agree. Because the goals of that shopkeeper and the goals of the customer match. In this way, the adoption of Bitcoin can be created in the beginning. If I myself get the opportunity to transact through Bitcoin to buy something, then I will definitely be happy to transact through Bitcoin.

In way when a large community is created in each country who will take transactions through Bitcoin as normal, the use of Bitcoin will increase further. Bitcoin will not only remain a fixed source of trading or investment, Bitcoin transactions will also serve as a better alternative way.

[X-ray]

However, if we look ahead to the next few years, do you think Bitcoin can realistically handle a massive chunk of everyday online commerce? Or will it always remain primarily a settlement layer and store of value, leaving day-to-day transactions to stable coins or other networks?

In line with what others say, I agree that Bitcoin is not capable of handling much larger transaction volumes; it wasn't built for that. I believe from the beginning Satoshi built Bitcoin as an alternative to fiat, not to replace it. Therefore, for the purpose of handling more significant transaction volumes, perhaps other more reliable solutions could be used for that. I see that currently there are Layer 2 solutions claiming they can address these scalability issues, but the question remains how well these solutions work in practice because so far LN has been tested, but it is still not feasible.

Layer 2 works well but it never truly take off, that's the problem even though LN is actively being integrated for corporate payments. It never gets the exposure it deserved.

Speaking from facts, bitcoin's layer 2 are already pretty capable, it can do scripts or contracts and it's fast.

After bitcoin's fee is going cheap as ordinal fading from existence, Layer 2 isn't really needed and growth has been in stagnation.

At least we know that even if in the future Bitcoin need scaling solution, we already got Layer 2 from lightning network to others.

So, it realistically able to power all online transactions by expanding with Layer 2.

But the time hasn't come yet.

[Primark]

It will probably rely on the acceptance by people and technology development. In my personal opinion, Bitcoin will be significant payment alternative on-line. Its utilization is still growing day after day, however. Bitcoin has been called the "store of value" or "digital gold. However, its primary intent was likely to be peer-to-peer electronic cash, initially. So what will happen in the future is not certain. But common sense is that more will adopt Bitcoin only when they know how to use Bitcoin or it becomes easy for them and they are not afraid of the volatility of the Bitcoin market. Currently, Bitcoin is being seen as an investment opportunity. The people are now saving their money in Bitcoin and in future it is predicted to further rise.

[YellowSwap]

Are you asking if Bitcoin can power all online transactions only? That's false, because what will happen to other centralised payment businesses? Bitcoin can't kill other payments solutions to take over all by itself.

We have talked about this many times on the forum, Bitcoin can only and always be an option, I am sorry to burst it all this way, even it's LN can't take over because let's be realistic, there are many payment solutions that are way convenient for some people than Bitcoin.

Many humans still find Bitcoin as means of payment too complicated, and it's because of this is why payment options must not be limited for one, many will always be welcome.

[stompix]

~

This problem does not exist with Lightning, which is what makes it even better for smaller merchants and smaller transactions.

Yes, this problem does not exist when it comes to capacity!
But the capacity problem still persists when you need to migrate people to LN!

So, thre are 4.5 billion Visa cards there, let's say 10 years ? So 450 million users to Lightning each year, 52,560 blocks/year so 8500 funding tx in a block...nope! 
Of course we could batch those tx, there would be an improvement, but still, nowhere near enough!
The only way is to abandon the principle of not your channel not your coins, lols, and go for a centralized custodial solution again!
And we're back to square one, why even use it?

The direction of your post is correct, but I would not make it so simple to claim that ideological reasons for not spending Bitcoin are the primary reason for which current on chain use is low. I think we see these trends across shitcoins too so that indicates that this claimed cause here is not the primary factor that determines the current situation. 

USDT and USDC are taking market share here, on this damn bitcointalk forum, 5 years ago Bitcoin was the undisputed king here, now apart from collectibles and signatures stablecoins have takn over all deals. Loans in BTC? A thing of the past! Asic miners? USD only!

[Jostern]

Are you asking if Bitcoin can power all online transactions only? That's false, because what will happen to other centralised payment businesses? Bitcoin can't kill other payments solutions to take over all by itself.

We have talked about this many times on the forum, Bitcoin can only and always be an option, I am sorry to burst it all this way, even it's LN can't take over because let's be realistic, there are many payment solutions that are way convenient for some people than Bitcoin.

Many humans still find Bitcoin as means of payment too complicated, and it's because of this is why payment options must not be limited for one, many will always be welcome.

I think bitcoin can gradually get there to power all online transactions, but the challenge with bitcoin is that so many countries haven’t yet accepted bitcoin because they don’t have any control over bitcoin, and there are people also who doesn’t know bitcoin, some have heard about bitcoin but doesn’t understand how bitcoin  actually works and how it’s operated, outside from bitcoin being a store of value, where by people can invest and hold bitcoin permanently as much as they desire, I don’t think Bitcoin can kill other means of payments with fiats, when you said way more other convenient means of payments that people can use I’m just wondering, which means of payment is more convenient than bitcoin now, when you decide to send money to someone who is in another country or continent, I don’t see any means as fast as bitcoin yet, so I think bitcoin can takeover, people who aren’t educated and doesn’t have knowledge about bitcoin are most likely to find bitcoin transactions inconvenient.

[PVequalNRT]

It will probably rely on the acceptance by people and technology development. In my personal opinion, Bitcoin will be significant payment alternative on-line. Its utilization is still growing day after day, however. Bitcoin has been called the "store of value" or "digital gold. However, its primary intent was likely to be peer-to-peer electronic cash, initially. So what will happen in the future is not certain. But common sense is that more will adopt Bitcoin only when they know how to use Bitcoin or it becomes easy for them and they are not afraid of the volatility of the Bitcoin market. Currently, Bitcoin is being seen as an investment opportunity. The people are now saving their money in Bitcoin and in future it is predicted to further rise.

For Bitcoin to be globally attracting transactions from people, I think we need to properly educate people about the benefit of Bitcoin transactions. Many people are used to the traditional transaction method, they are totally committed to traditional transactions and don't care about Bitcoin even though they know Bitcoin exist. It's left for them to have one thing to be convinced they need Bitcoin. If you do this, you don't need to force people to use it globally for transactions.

Some people that own traditional platforms don't like the fact that Bitcoin exist, if Bitcoin take over, it's going to affect their businesses. Imagine that Visa and PayPal lose 1/2 of it's customer because they want to use Bitcoin, it's going to cost them. They will not like Bitcoin to over take their business.

[B-BossMan]

It will probably rely on the acceptance by people and technology development. In my personal opinion, Bitcoin will be significant payment alternative on-line. Its utilization is still growing day after day, however. Bitcoin has been called the "store of value" or "digital gold. However, its primary intent was likely to be peer-to-peer electronic cash, initially. So what will happen in the future is not certain. But common sense is that more will adopt Bitcoin only when they know how to use Bitcoin or it becomes easy for them and they are not afraid of the volatility of the Bitcoin market. Currently, Bitcoin is being seen as an investment opportunity. The people are now saving their money in Bitcoin and in future it is predicted to further rise.

For Bitcoin to be globally attracting transactions from people, I think we need to properly educate people about the benefit of Bitcoin transactions. Many people are used to the traditional transaction method, they are totally committed to traditional transactions and don't care about Bitcoin even though they know Bitcoin exist. It's left for them to have one thing to be convinced they need Bitcoin. If you do this, you don't need to force people to use it globally for transactions.

Some people that own traditional platforms don't like the fact that Bitcoin exist, if Bitcoin take over, it's going to affect their businesses. Imagine that Visa and PayPal lose 1/2 of it's customer because they want to use Bitcoin, it's going to cost them. They will not like Bitcoin to over take their business.

I see the bitcoin adoptions as something natural, because the more we are going, the higher people keep using it, and that's how they realize it's usefulness and values. As it gives us the freedom of easy access to our funds without any intermediate, no one has the controls over it like our traditional assets, well knowledge or education is vital, as some folks are still seeing Bitcoin as just something to invest on instead of viewing the usefulness and the values of it. Though when it comes to competition, it's something that's normal in technology, so Bitcoin adoptions actually comes from it value, trust and usefulness.
Those that own  a traditional platforms would not like to welcome anything that will or could decrease thier intrest. That's the power of bitcoin.

[hmbdofficial]

This is where lightning comes in. Bitcoin lightning takes seconds to send transaction across different channel. The lightning is even faster, like super faster than any of the layer transactions because even if it's congested, it doesn't wait for confirmation until there is settlements on the main chain which can be done when you want to close the channel. Bitcoin lightning can solve the scalability most people are facing everyday but I don't know why they don't like lightning.

Like if you visit some of the centralized exchanges, they have lightning deposit. Binance even recommend it for their users because they are one of the largest channel on lightning. Some of the challenges we have on lightning is even because people are not using it. If people start to use lightning for large scale transactions, there will be enough liquidity for even institutional investors. Imagined an institution with $1b open channel, it transactions are going to easily routed.

reading your reply and the part which Bold from your post quoted here got me thinking if its possible for a transaction to not get confirmed after its already being settled on the lightning network?

i also think why most people are not interested in the lighting network, which bring about the low liquidity you mentioned, is its the complexity. if it was a straight forward process many people will not mind even if it will cost more fees.

[Iamgoat]

It will probably rely on the acceptance by people and technology development. In my personal opinion, Bitcoin will be significant payment alternative on-line. Its utilization is still growing day after day, however. Bitcoin has been called the "store of value" or "digital gold. However, its primary intent was likely to be peer-to-peer electronic cash, initially. So what will happen in the future is not certain. But common sense is that more will adopt Bitcoin only when they know how to use Bitcoin or it becomes easy for them and they are not afraid of the volatility of the Bitcoin market. Currently, Bitcoin is being seen as an investment opportunity. The people are now saving their money in Bitcoin and in future it is predicted to further rise.

Yes. Bitcoin has the ability to take over all online transactions in the near future because bitcoin offer some unique advantages over many traditional currencies today, and it is the ability to standalone for a long period of time in a decentralized economy. Bitcoin has been able to survive all the attacks directly and indirectly thrown at it since it creation over 15 years ago. Began from a small currency undergoing growth to becoming a digital gold like you called it and a store of value. Today, bitcoin has gone beyond such standards and now adopted by some country as a legal tender for transactions. If bitcoin continues like this and the global community making use of it are able to manage it and aggregate it properly, it will definitely power all online transactions in the future especially from the decentralized network which it is almost powering already.

[matrixx]

Looking at the ongoing improvements with Layer 2 scaling solutions like the Lightning Network, transaction speeds and fees have improved dramatically... However, if we look ahead to the next few years, do you think Bitcoin can realistically handle a massive chunk of everyday online commerce?

If we look strictly at the raw on-chain math, the answer is a hard no on Layer 1, and not on pure Lightning alone without further protocol evolution.

When discussing whether Bitcoin can power all global commerce, people often overlook the baseline physics of the blockchain:

1. The "Channel Opening" Blockspace Bottleneck
Every Lightning channel requires at least one on-chain funding transaction and one closing transaction.

• A standard Bitcoin block averages ~2,000 to 2,500 transactions.
• At ~144 blocks per day, L1 can process roughly ~350,000 to 400,000 transactions daily at maximum saturation.
• If 1 billion active online consumers wanted just one non-custodial Lightning channel of their own, dedicating 100% of Bitcoin's global blockspace exclusively to channel openings (zero payments, zero consolidations, zero other use) would take roughly 7 to 8 consecutive years.
  

This proves that simple "L1 for settlement, L2 Lightning for payments" is mathematically insufficient for total global adoption.

2. The Working Capital & Liquidity Friction
Running non-custodial Lightning requires inbound liquidity and locked collateral. A merchant processing thousands of daily micropayments cannot constantly rebalance channels on L1 when mempool fees spike to 80+ sat/vB. The routing economics break down unless the liquidity providers are heavily capitalized routing hubs.

3. The Realistic Architecture: Multi-Tier Hierarchy
If Bitcoin does absorb online commerce, it will not look like every shopper broadcasting a direct L1 or L2 transaction. It will require a layered pyramid:

• Layer 1 (Base Layer): Global reserve settlement between central banks, institutions, and major protocol vaults.
  
• Layer 2 (State Channels / Lightning): High-volume settlement corridors between liquidity providers, banks, and merchant aggregators.
  
• Layer 3 / Off-Chain Enclaves (Ark, Fedimint, Cashu): Chaumian e-cash mints and shared-UTXO covenants where millions of day-to-day coffee and subscription transactions settle instantly with complete privacy, zero on-chain footprint, and cryptographic backing without requiring individual L1 UTXOs.
  

Bitcoin can power global commerce, but not by cramming billions of individual retail balances onto the base chain. It succeeds by acting as the incorruptible, mathematically scarce reserve asset that anchors off-chain payment networks.

Are merchants more likely to adopt layered trust-minimized protocols like Ark/Fedimint, or will centralized custodial processors simply become the "Visa of Bitcoin"?

[Hamza2424]

Whom?
Seriously, whom?
I've been around this forum for a decade, you can see the topics about spending Bitcoin on something, from people eager to buy cars, houses, travel with Bitcoins. We're down to 99.9% saying no, don't spend your coins it will be worth 1000x more tommorow. Usage is down the drain, and it's not me saying this, is the blockchain and the mempool, there is no competition whatsoever for fees, you get your tx confirmed with 0.2 sat/vb, because... nobody wants to spend them!

Well bro, I can't say that person has bought X with BTC. I know about myself, and I am sure others will be using BTC as payment too, but I don't think I sounded like everyone is using BTC for payment. 99.9% are using BTC for 1000x, which is strangely a strange quest for those 99.9%. Put me in that 0.1% haha.

Seriously...WAKE UP!
Billions out here don't give a rat's ass about this!

Bro, it's my bad, I said "no one" haha. You are literally nitpicking, but that's fine. I understand I should have been more accurate with my replies. And it's true, the majority dgaf, but I do.

So, how does this have anything to do with the topic?
It's obviously a transaction that doesn't happen on the blockchain at all, nor does it actually involve crypto!

Hmm yep, that's a good point. I did not take it into account, but bro, it is relevant because people are at least paying in crypto. They can deposit their crypto on Crypto.com from their non custodial app, they can then use it to pay for the ticket. That's the direct use of crypto. But if you say it was not on chain, so I don't accept this as relevant, then that's a different discussion I would like to explore, like why?

But I mentioned that to support my claim that there are people who like to pay with crypto. If it won't be true, then why did Crypto.com have this partnership? Emirates must have seen some demand or something.

[Dogedegen]

Yes, this problem does not exist when it comes to capacity!
But the capacity problem still persists when you need to migrate people to LN!

So, thre are 4.5 billion Visa cards there, let's say 10 years ? So 450 million users to Lightning each year, 52,560 blocks/year so 8500 funding tx in a block...nope! 
Of course we could batch those tx, there would be an improvement, but still, nowhere near enough!
The only way is to abandon the principle of not your channel not your coins, lols, and go for a centralized custodial solution again!
And we're back to square one, why even use it?

This is a problem in theory that is not real right now, so why are we worrying about that? Are we anywhere close to having an issue with so many people waiting in line to migrate to Lightning? We are not there so I don't understand focusing on theoretical concerns do dismiss the best solution over small concerns. Right now Lightning is the most superior option to a problem that does not have a complete solution. We should use it, promote it, advertise it, and get people on lightning now when fees are low. Merchants do not have the issue of capacity, if people are on Lightning or not is not their concern. Adding Lightning is fast depending on how they have added Bitcoin or crypto already and it does not really cost them much to keep it accepted and in some cases it costs them an extra 0 dollars per month.

If we come to a time where we have a huge line of people waiting to migrate to people that would be amazing! We can worry about solving the problem as the issue becomes relevant.

The direction of your post is correct, but I would not make it so simple to claim that ideological reasons for not spending Bitcoin are the primary reason for which current on chain use is low. I think we see these trends across shitcoins too so that indicates that this claimed cause here is not the primary factor that determines the current situation. 

USDT and USDC are taking market share here, on this damn bitcointalk forum, 5 years ago Bitcoin was the undisputed king here, now apart from collectibles and signatures stablecoins have takn over all deals. Loans in BTC? A thing of the past! Asic miners? USD only!

Where is the data that confirms this? The stablecoins are being mostly used for things that fiat was used for. They are not replacing Bitcoin, they are replacing some digital fiat transactions.

[SeriouslyGiveaway]

Where is the data that confirms this? The stablecoins are being mostly used for things that fiat was used for. They are not replacing Bitcoin, they are replacing some digital fiat transactions.

Stablecoins are considered as other forms of fiat currencies and it's truly right to say stablecoins are used as alternatives (I don't think they are replacements) of fiat currencies. The true replacements of fiat currencies are CBDCs, not stablecoins.

How about Bitcoin?
Bitcoin can be used for many things from investment, store of value to transactions for business trades. If people in a business trade don't want to face with longer pending confirmation time of Bitcoin blockchain, don't want to face with risk of price volatility, they will find alternatives which are stablecoins - faster in confirmation time, cheaper in transaction fee, and more possible stable in value.

Then it's not wrong to consider stablecoins as alternatives for Bitcoin.

[NotATether]

Then it's not wrong to consider stablecoins as alternatives for Bitcoin.

No, it absolutely is wrong. They are two different things:

- Stablecoins do not change in price, can be frozen by their issuer (usually), and are integrated into checkout pages by payment gateway companies
- Bitcoin is volatile, cannot be frozen, and sometimes is not accepted without KYC after an AML check.

That's why people are pricing stuff in USDT or USDC and not BTC.

[Luzin]

- Bitcoin is volatile, cannot be frozen, and sometimes is not accepted without KYC after an AML check.

That's why people are pricing stuff in USDT or USDC and not BTC.

It means not anytime soon, because the infrastructure really isn’t ready for it. Remember how ordinals made fees super expensive and clogged the network?
It seems like just a dream since world governments and even the IMF don’t recognize it as a legitimate means of transaction. But if you look at Iran, they do use Bitcoin as an alternative transaction method, since they’ve had problems with fiat. IMO

[Faisal2202]

Are you comparing bitcoin to other cryptocurrencies to know if it can take up majority of crypto transactions or how much bitcoin can take up when compared to fiat online payment system?

Against other crypto, I do not have much data on the amount of transactions that gets completed daily, but with fiat that completes about 10,000-50,000 per second, bitcoin cannot compete even with extra layer solutions.

Roughly speaking, BTC can process around 300k tx and maybe more. You can confirm https://charts.bitbo.io/tx-per-day/

So if we compare BTC's daily tx numbers with other crypto like XRP, Sol, BNB, ETH, brother, then BTC loses because they can process in millions. Like ETH alone can process more than 2 million in a single day. So Bitcoin cannot compete with any of them, and I don't think that's what OP's purpose was. He just asked if BTC can be used for it.

And it can't, even with LN it can't, although some members said ARK can make it possible, but I have not used ARK so far, so I will not comment.

[snowpega]

No, it absolutely is wrong. They are two different things:

- Stablecoins do not change in price, can be frozen by their issuer (usually), and are integrated into checkout pages by payment gateway companies
- Bitcoin is volatile, cannot be frozen, and sometimes is not accepted without KYC after an AML check.

That's why people are pricing stuff in USDT or USDC and not BTC.

Yeah, although this is a big fact that you have more privacy and control when it comes to Bitcoin.
But Bitcoin can be seized if your government find something suspicious in your transactions, and in such cases, governments directly request the service to hand over that amount in Bitcoin. This is why it is never recommended to use centralized platforms because you don't have your keys and full control over your funds.

An old case just came to my mind regarding this matter.
This was the SilkRoad case, if I am not wrong, where the US government seized billions of dollars' worth of bitcoins when they transferred a large amount to Coinbase. I can be wrong, as this case is now old, CMIIW! Whatever I remember regarding this case, I shared it with you. By the way, do you remember this case?

[stompix]

~

This is a problem in theory that is not real right now, so why are we worrying about that? Are we anywhere close to having an issue with so many people waiting in line to migrate to Lightning?

This is exactly the problem...
Even if people wanted to migrate en mass to LN, it would not be possible!
Remember, the topic is about Bitcoin being able to power all the transactions and we have already gone from that to card payments so an order of magnitude lower.

We are not there so I don't understand focusing on theoretical concerns do dismiss the best solution over small concerns.

I'm not dismissing the solution!
I'm pointing out a fact with the current architecture that is needed for that solution!
There is no point in building a 4-lane highway that merges in one lane in a 90-degree curve to a red light in the busiest crosswalk in the city.

Where is the data that confirms this? The stablecoins are being mostly used for things that fiat was used for. They are not replacing Bitcoin, they are replacing some digital fiat transactions.

Check the blockchain, all the tx are there with all the stats.
https://tronscan.io/data/charts/tokens/usdt-stats
Also , if stablecoins were replacing digital transactions, you would see a decrease in card payments, right?
Well, stablecoins are killing credit cards just as Bitcoin killed Western Union...we know how that dream ended

[Callido]

However, if we look ahead to the next few years, do you think Bitcoin can realistically handle a massive chunk of everyday online commerce?

In the next few years what will actually change in Bitcoin? Do you expect something different other than price changes?

There are several disadvantage when it comes to using Bitcoin for our everyday transactions but it's on the volatility aspect I am concerned about, the others aren't serious problems to me. A situation where price will always be changed in a matter of minutes, the buying price and the selling price of goods wouldn't be same if converted to fait and in bad conditions individuals will suffer losses.