Bitcoin Moves More Value Than Visa - With Far Fewer Users

Yesterday, the CEO of the mining pool Braiins pointed out that more value moved through the Bitcoin blockchain in a single day than through Visa - $51.9 billion versus $41 billion. He cited this as evidence that Bitcoin is not dead.

To be honest, I didn’t expect to see numbers like that.

No, I don’t think Bitcoin is dying. Not every block is full, but most of them are still packed. That means the network is operating close to its capacity. There’s some room for more transactions - but not much.

Bitcoin simply can’t onboard vastly more users than it already has. The user base isn’t huge, but it’s already close to what the network can comfortably handle. A several-fold increase in users would likely do more harm than good. So Bitcoin isn’t dying - it’s just serving exactly those who actually need it.

What I didn’t expect is that this relatively small group of users is moving more value than the massive global user base of Visa. That’s what surprised me. It seems that those who really have value to move have made their choice - in favor of reliability and freedom, in favor of a system where your transaction can’t be intercepted or stopped.

Then again, maybe it’s not that surprising. The largest swaps we see on rabbit.io almost always involve Bitcoin.