Coinbase, a prominent cryptocurrency exchange in the United States, has recently stated that Americans could have potentially saved a staggering $74 billion in 2022 if they had utilized cryptocurrency technology instead of relying on credit cards for payments. This revelation was made in Coinbase’s State of Crypto report, which sheds light on the exorbitant transaction fees imposed by traditional financial institutions, resulting in a system plagued by delays.
According to Coinbase, implementing a cryptocurrency payment system would offer substantial savings compared to traditional credit cards. The report suggests that by choosing crypto-based payment options, Americans could have individually saved an average of $600 in credit card fees during 2022 alone. Importantly, these savings wouldn’t just benefit consumers, as merchants were burdened with a hefty $126 billion in fees for processing credit card transactions. In comparison, the cost associated with processing payments through cryptocurrency would be relatively negligible.
The report highlights that crypto payments have the potential to be up to 5,000 times cheaper than traditional methods, such as wire transfers, especially when leveraging proof of stake-based networks like Solana or Polygon. Additionally, it emphasizes the superior speed of crypto payments, which can be at least 24 times faster and possibly up to 432,000 times faster than legacy methods, depending on the specific cryptocurrency used in the transaction. The report also examines the use case of crypto for payroll payments, showcasing how it enables near-instantaneous transactions compared to the typical delivery times of one to six business days.
With an increasing awareness of the advantages offered by alternative blockchain systems over legacy counterparts, people are becoming more conscious of the drawbacks of slower, costlier options that rely on the actions of financial institutions. The report reveals that 71% of consumers desire cheaper transactions, 70% seek faster transactions, and 63% are actively seeking improved accessibility to these payment alternatives.