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A report published by crypto payments platform CoinGate today, 10 January, has highlighted that cryptocurrencies are increasingly being used as payment methods instead and not just as speculative assets.
The report reveals that 2023 was a record-breaking year for the crypto payment platform, and for the crypto industry overall.
Crypto payments are booming
In their report, the firm highlights that 32.35% of all transactions over the past decade occurred in 2023 alone, making it a uniquely significant year for the crypto payments industry.
As per the report, CoinGate processed 1,294,058 transactions in 2023. This is a huge increase of 39.4% from the previous record of 928,517 transactions in 2022.
CoinGate is quick to highlight that the integration of Binance Pay Wallet into their platform in March 2023 has been a key component of their success. Specifically, Binance Pay accounted for 8.2% of all payments.
Merchants accepting crypto
Crypto payments only work if there are people who agree to accept crypto for the products or services. Data gathered by BTC merchant tracker, BTC Map, seems to confirm an upward trajectory, which is a huge contributor to the increase in payments.
Is Bitcoin dominance over?
Bitcoin reigned supreme as the primary means of payment through CoinGate, taking up 35.6% of the total transactions processed. This was in part thanks to the increased adoption of the Lightning Network, which handled 7.8% of all CoinGate’s BTC payments.
These findings are also evidenced by another crypto payments provider, BitPay, whose data shows an increasing usage of the Lightning Network, especially towards the end of 2023.
That said, stablecoin Tether (USDT) held 25.4% of the 2023 total. In the later stages of the year, it overtook BTC as the dominant payment method, accounting for 36.5% of all transactions in November, with the trend peaking at 39.1% – reducing Bitcoin payments dominance to 20.7%.
Litecoin payments are popular
Litecoin (LTC) is an unexpectedly popular means of payment being ranked as the third-most used crypto making up for 9.5% of total transactions processed by CoinGate, beating out Ethereum (ETH) which occupied 9.3% of the total.
This is also backed by data from BitPay, which shows that LTC became the most popular means of payment on their platform, overtaking BTC in late October 2023.
Crypto payments have always been considered an area lacking behind in the world of Web3. Many people who own crypto do so as a means of investment, but as the evidence shows, crypto is truly gaining traction as a legitimate means of payment.
