The rise of Cryptocurrency is becoming harder to ignore, those who are already in this crypto space are well aware of it. This futuristic technology has the potential to streamline various processes and can give rise to plenty of innovations across different industries.
Bitcoin, the world’s first and most popular cryptocurrency, shot a new record high of $65,000 last month. Recently, EL Salvador, A central American country’s president, proposed making Bitcoin a legal tender. Some fortunate sectors like banking, insurance, software, and manufacturing have shifted bitcoin close to mainstream, we’ll briefly discuss some of them in this article.
While Dogecoin has gained tremendous attention, most people and industries continue to adopt it.
Therefore, it is making its way to the mainstream. At the same time anybody needs to understand about:
- Cryptocurrency mainstream acceptance by some reputed organizations.
- Some of the challenges exist to completely go mainstream.
- Takeaways.
Let’s get started.
Cryptocurrency mainstream acceptance by some reputed organizations
- Sotheby’s Institute of Art:
A popular institute located in London has said last month (May 2021) that it would accept cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and the second most popular crypto Ethereum for its latest Bansky’s significant artwork “Love is in the air”.
Sotheby’s has recently partnered with the popular DEX platform Coinbase for the sale. Coinbase accepted the fact in its blog saying its partnership with Southby’s coinbase could make the way to further a wide range of adoption of Bitcoin into the mainstream.
This is one of the recent examples of Crypto making its way to mainstream adoption.
- Paypal:
Paypal Holdings Inc. has recently (March 2021) availed the facility for its US consumers to make use of their crypto wallet holdings to pay its online merchants globally. Consequently, that could boost the use of crypto assets in everyday commerce.
Paypal said that users can now hold crypto-assets like bitcoin, bitcoin cash, litecoin in PayPal wallet and can convert them to fiat currency to make purchases.
President and CEO of Paypal Mr. Dan Schulman have said to the press that “This is the first time you can seamlessly use cryptocurrencies in the same way as a credit card or a debit card inside your PayPal wallet”.
- Tesla:
Tesla is an American electrical vehicle manufacturing company located in California.
Recently (March 2021), CEO of Tesla Elon Musk has said that customers can now buy its electrical vehicles with bitcoin.
Soon after this tweet of Elon Musk, the price of Bitcoin rose by over 4%. By looking at this trend companies like Mastercard Inc, Bank of New York Mellon Corp have adopted this emerging asset to its mainstream.
Though this new technology is gradually coming into the mainstream, there are certain challenges limiting organizations to take this forward to the mainstream. Let’s look at a few of them.
- Complications in Regulatory terms:
Since Bitcoins are not issued by the government authority, they are not legal tender. Regulations play an important role when it comes to matters of trust. To earn the interest of investors, cryptocurrencies must constitute a strong regulatory framework. Its confusing regulatory terms may give rise to illegal activities, cyber threats due to which governments over the world are not able to take a strong take on.
There’s a need for a proper regulatory framework along with trained financial advisors in crypto assets.
- Risk of understanding Volatility:
Many people across the globe are skeptical about cryptocurrencies due it’s uncertain nature. Due to its high risk of changing values, most people find it too risky to pay with crypto. People who are already in this space for a longer time, and better understand the regulatory uncertainties and speculations that could lead to changing of value. But the general audience, who are new to this platform may end up losing money by believing such rumors. To avoid such faults and uncertainties, one has to be trained about the concept of stable coins.
- Privacy concerns:
Most of the industries and people express their privacy concerns about crypto, which is a public ledger filled up with transaction history. Crypto’s transparent feature may lead to several privacy concerns. People feel that as Blockchain’s ledger gives transaction information to the public, there are high chances of someone to figure out how much money users have, and accordingly, they may plan for an attack.
This concern also has a solution, certain blockchains mask the details of sender and recipient to achieve higher privacy. Examples: Zcash, Bitcoin Private.
Takeaways
This article has given brief information about how different sectors are showing interest in accepting Crypto as their mainstream payment, and those industries are very clear about regulatory reforms, uncertainties, and risks. That’s why they are succeeding too. On the other hand, most of the industries are failing to understand or are confused about the risks involved. Therefore, this article has also given an insight into how they could be overcome.
A Cryptocurrency blogger and Enthusiast