Bitcoin transactions: Anything but fast
Despite the hype, bitcoin will probably not be suitable as a general means of payment for the time being. It fails due to the transaction speed alone, as a comparison shows. Bitcoin transactions are much too slow.
How will we pay in the future? Probably digitally - with Bitcoin transactions? In all likelihood not, says Daniel Franke of Credit card.net. This platform recently compared the number of transactions per second possible with cryptocurrencies and payment service providers. With a sobering conclusion: "The transaction speed of the Bitcoin is thus at best sufficient for a village savings bank, but not as a global payment system," says Daniel Franke. "Bitcoin's transaction speed is far too low. Other cryptocurrencies are much more powerful here." In the case of the classic Bitcoin, the value is namely only 7 (!) transactions per second. By comparison, the processing speed at PayPal allows 450 transactions per second, VISA even theoretically up to 56,000 and the Chinese online payment system Alipay up to 256,000. With the cryptocurrency Stellar Lumens, 4,000 transactions per second are still possible. A comparison of 12 payment service providers/cryptocurrencies with regard to their max. number of transactions per second can be found under https://www.kreditkarte.net/kryptowaehrungen/
In addition, the costs of Bitcoin transactions are now exorbitant. For a medium transaction size, the specialist portal calculated one-off costs of just under 9.95 euros. For other cryptocurrencies such as DASH (Digital Cash) or Ether, the corresponding costs were 6 and 17 cents, respectively. He added that an elementary problem with Bitcoin is that cryptocurrencies can hardly be explained in one or two sentences, which involves risks. "Bitcoins are highly complex and only conditionally suitable as a general means of payment. We see Bitcoins more as part of an investment portfolio, but not for shopping at the supermarket checkout," concludes Daniel Franke.
