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Is bitcoin (BTC-USD) going to become a widely used medium of exchange? Its lack of acceptance as a means of payment among merchants, as well as its high transaction costs, “is now changing,” Morgan Stanley analyst Sheena Shah wrote in a note to clients Thursday.
Room to grow? The global crypto market cap recently stood at $1.87T, which may sound large, but not when compared with more established asset classes like global equities (~$90T), bonds (~$120T), and Gold (XAUUSD:CUR) (~$12T), according to 2021 figures.
A slew of payment companies, in particular, are looking to expand their reach in the growing decentralized space. For example, payments firm Strike recently teamed up with point-of-sale supplier NCR (NCR) and rewards-based payments firm Blackhawk Network, which “could mean that a large number of physical stores, restaurants and cafes in the US will be able to accept bitcoin payments in the near future,” Shah explained.
Also, Strike in early April partnered with ecommerce platform Shopify (SHOP) to allow merchants to accept bitcoin (BTC-USD) payments as dollars over the Lightning Network, the most popular BTC scaling solution. “This is not a small deal,” SA contributor Mike Fay said April 14. “The merchant benefits from this kind of exchange because the merchant doesn’t need to pay traditional payment processing fees through traditional payment rails. For the user, paying for goods through Bitcoin’s Lightning Network might ultimately lead to lower prices for everything since the merchant won’t have to bake the processing fee into the cost of the item,” he added. The crypto adoption “evolution” doesn’t stop there. Another payment processing firm, Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) said early April that it will offer merchants the ability to receive settlement directly in USD Coin (USDC-USD), a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar.
Keep in mind that fees on bitcoin (BTC-USD) transactions using the Lightning…
