Analyst tips Bitcoin to rival PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard in the coming years

A market analyst at MoffettNathanson has predicted that Bitcoin will eventually rival the likes of PayPal, MasterCard, and Visa.

High volatility and a lack of liquidity is often used as a counter-argument to those claiming Bitcoin could one day revolutionise the payment processing industry, but analyst Lisa Ellis believes the opposite.

“Why would I ever buy coffee with Bitcoin?” Ellis told Bloomberg, before claiming it could be a viable option, “as ludicrous as it may sound.”

She continued: “Cryptocurrency systems (e.g., Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple) are potentially disruptive to private payment systems. Their core design characteristics – which are aimed at enabling ‘freedom of money’ – are in direct contrast to the characteristics of most traditional, private payment systems.”

This year we have seen major institutions like JP Morgan and the London Stock Exchange Group begin to adopt cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, with sentiment seeming to change over the past 12 months.

Banks were quick to downplay the impact of cryptocurrencies during the bull market, and maybe they were right. At the time, the speculative hype-driven bull market was not about innovation, it was about getting rich quick.

Now that the bear market has been going on for more than a year, the speculators have moved on to the next hype cycle investment, while cryptocurrency projects continue to innovate despite the flailing prices.

Ellis concluded her statement by saying that the technology could open up new revenue streams, such as “combining networks’ authentication abilities” for tracking goods through supply chains.

Projects like Wabi and Modum are small-cap cryptocurrencies that focus on the supply chain aspect of baby formula, in response to the Chinese scandal in 2008. Both of which are used to verify and ensure the chain of production to distribution.

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