Despite Little Growth or Usage, Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin Claims Blockchain-Based Virtual Currencies Will Rival Visa in Two Years (LOL)

Here we go again: After years of hype over Bitcoin, little of which paid off while the virtual currency was beset by one scandal after another, Ethereum is starting to gain interest as a potentially better alternative. Unsurprisingly, it's also starting to generate the same level of hype, and the same implausible but unchallenged claims:

The mind behind Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin [believes]... with the right incentives, Ethereum can replace things like credit card networks. Right now the network is a bit too slow for most mainstream applications. “Bitcoin is processing a bit less than 3 transactions per second,” he said. “Ethereum is doing five a second. Uber gives 12 rides a second. It will take a couple of years for the blockchain to replace Visa.”

Remember how I kept pointing out for several years that daily Bitcoin transactions simply weren't growing, and were tiny in absolute terms? Let's look at daily Ethereum transactions:

After solid if not hockey stick growth over this year, daily Ethereum transactions peaked recently at nearly 500,000, and since then, have floundered between 350-450K transactions per day. And are no longer consistently growing. That's roughly the transaction rate of Bitcoin, which have also peaked.

OK, how's that stack up against Visa? Well, Vitalik, it's like this [.pdf link]: 

So there's 3.1 billion Visa cards currently in circulation. If we're conservative and assume that 1 in 3 Visa owners use their cards on average once a day, that's... 1 billion daily Visa transactions.

1,000,000,000 daily transactions -- versus 500,000 daily transactions on Ethereum, 500,000 or so more from Bitcoin, and let's be generous and say 500,000 from other digital currencies.

Which Vitalik Buterin thinks will equalize in just 24 months. Despite a plateau in ETC and BTC growth. It may be pretty to think so, but the evidence isn't there. 

Comments

[sirhc deSantis]

Love alternative exchange mechanisms. Just swapped an hours help setting up a little cashier network for a carton of smokes and a six pack from a small shop round the corner. Blockchain that...