Crypto's dream: "E-money": 700 billion US dollars



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A collection of Bitcoins is on this arranged photograph in Danbury, UK, on ​​Thursday, December 10, 2015. (Bloomberg photo)

MADRID: The biggest digital coin in the world was born and promised to become an "electronic money", but Bitcoin and its swarm of imitators are falling further and further into the shadow of traditional payment services.

Funk crypto-currencies have now sent the total value of the 100 largest chips to about half that of Visa Inc. In January, they were worth almost three times the value of the Goliath credit card.

This collapse represents a setback for cryptocurrency advocates, who described them as opponents of Visa and Mastercard Inc. For some analysts, the payment systems put in place have become a benchmark for digital coins.

If there is a need for speed, the traditional players always have the advantage. The seven to eight transactions per second of Bitcoin are comparable to the more than 65,000 Visa. Meanwhile, most current Bitcoin transactions are now investments or speculation, rather than buying luxury goods or holidays with the progenitor of the "electronic cash" Satoshi Nakamoto planned.

The imperative for many investors has been to accelerate cryptographic transactions. There is a list of personalities providing start-up capital or expertise for this purpose, from Twitter Inc.'s co-founder, Jack Dorsey, and Tesla Inc.'s investor, Bill Lee, to Marc O & # 39; Brien, who stepped down as CEO of Visa UK in 2014 to advise on e-money. startups.

Bitcoins fell by nearly 75% this year, including the 14% drop recorded on Monday. The total market value of cryptocurrencies has fallen about 85% since its peak reached in early January, according to data from CornerMarketCap.com concerning more than 2,000 of them. That's about 711 billion US dollars.

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