Raynor de Best
Content expert covering payments and (crypto)currencies
Cryptocurrency adoption among businesses - statistics & facts
Can virtual coins like Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH) be used as a day-to-day payment method? Cryptocurrency payments online reached the news in early 2021, when Beeple's First 5000 Days digital artwork was sold for over 42,300 ETH or 69 million U.S. dollars. Even when compared to other projects sold using cryptocurrencies, Mike Winkelmann’s art piece was significantly more expensive. This technology can be used as a certificate of authenticity in art pieces but was also used when Twitter founder Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet. NFT sales often occurred in specific segments, but are not used in e-commerce. This leads to an important question: Can cryptocurrencies also be used by consumers? Can someone, for instance, walk into a store with them to buy a coffee? This is more difficult to establish, as can be observed in payment figures for the United States – where digital coins are barely mentioned.
Crypto acceptance in big companies, or the curious case of Tesla and Bitcoin
According to some outlets, there are several big companies that accept BTC payments. These include the likes of Coca Cola and Microsoft, but also Home Depot in the United States or BMW dealers in the United Kingdom. However, there are no exact figures on how much of their income comes from cryptocurrencies. This is due to how their BTC acceptance is set up. In the case of Microsoft, for instance, they use BitPay, a processor that receives the BTC payment, converts it to fiat currency and then sends it to Microsoft. In late 2020, BitPay was especially active in gift cards. Tesla, however, decided to do things differently in March 2021: Bitcoins paid for their cars would be retained as Bitcoin, and not converted. This makes Tesla the first big company to do so, with the company’s involvement in cryptocurrencies being one the reasons why the Bitcoin price went up over the course of 2021.Where in the world can one find a Bitcoin payment location?
Information on cryptocurrency acceptance worldwide – even for Bitcoin – is difficult to come by as there is no central authority that tracks them. Data comes from websites which allow users to report these locations. For instance, the United States was said to have the highest number of Bitcoin ATMS in the world in 2021 and it was also believed to have more businesses with an ATM or in-store payment option than any other country in the world. Nevertheless, these figures should be used with caution. Take Italy, for instance: Whilst the U.S. reached first place on both rankings, the Mediterranean country ranked 13th and second, respectively. Convenience oriented businesses were more likely to offer cryptocurrency solutions than others in early 2021.
