Supply-Demand Mismatch Behind Slowing Mainstream Crypto Adoption

Cryptocurrency adoption has been growing at a breath-taking rate, across most sectors. The same can be said by looking at the total crypto market capitalization which has grown over 15x from $190 Billion in January 2020 to $3.0 Trillion in November 2021. 

While the rate of growth has been dramatic, there are still some huge gaps to fill between consumer demand and merchant acceptance for cryptocurrency payments.

Increasing Crypto Appetite

A recent survey done jointly by Crypto.com and WorldPay from FIS revealed that the appetite for spending and accepting crypto payments are large. This report gives insights into customer and merchant demand by industry. 

Notably, both customers and merchants have expressed a growing desire to transact using cryptocurrencies in the next year. A staggering 75% of Crypto.com customers and 60% of Worldpay merchants said they want to purchase and accept goods or services with cryptocurrencies respectively. 

Firstly, there is an almost 15% gap between users willing to transact in crypto and merchants intending to accept crypto goods and services. The same revealed a clear mismatch in the merchant and consumer desire.

Customer demand to spend crypto clearly outweighed that of merchants to accept, which could provide a decent opportunity for organizations to monetize on the same. 

That said, as merchants begin to adopt cryptocurrency payments, currency preference by the two sides will be an important factor. However, seems like when it comes to this, both parties have agreed to stick to the top two coins and stablecoins. 

Bitcoin, Ethereum Remain Favourite

The survey presented a strong desire to transact with the highest market cap currencies (Bitcoin and Ethereum) and stable coins owing to their lower volatility and increased scalability due to layer-2 solutions being introduced.  

Both consumers and merchants trust and prefer to use established and high-cap cryptocurrencies— Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, and USD Coin (USDC).

Supply-Demand Mismatch

The survey, done on 110,000 Crypto.com customers and over 1.5 million Worldpay merchants, further highlighted that 70% of customers prefer both in-store and online crypto payment mediums. On the other hand, the majority of merchants appear to be focused on the eCommerce experience only. 

This presented a clear mismatch in the industry in terms of supply and demands of crypto users and merchants which could hinder mainstream cryptocurrency adoption.