9 Trillion vs. 100 Trillion: Billionaire Mike Novogratz Asks Which Cryptocurrency Will Win the Payments Race

On December 31, billionaire investor Mike Novogratz asked his Twitter followers which blockchain coin has the best chance of winning the payments race and offered four choices. Novogratz said there are lots of “contenders” and listed off Facebook’s diem, tether, bitcoin cash, and Circle’s popular stablecoin.

This week Mike Novogratz asked his Twitter followers out of diem, bitcoin cash, USDC, and tether (USDT), which coin “has best chance of winning payments?” Novogratz said that there were a lot of contenders and asked his followers to give him their thoughts on which coin would dominate. The tweet received a lot of replies and many crypto asset proponents discussed Novogratz’s question and had a number of interesting theories.

“Diem has Facebook network effect,” one individual replied. “But will be very watched by regulators. Still should be #1 candidate if FB delivers. USDC should eventually take over tether as it is U.S. based and less shady. Paypal could be a surprise challenger. Decentralised stable such as empty set dollars too,” the person added.

“LINK will be the ultimate winner,” another person responded. “Platform winners obviously ETH, possibly DIEM and lookout for AVAX. 2021 will be the year of stablecoin experiments, with multiple custodial stablecoins being born and plenty of money made and lost in algo stablecoins. USDT and USDC reign.”

Of course, a great number of bitcoin cash (BCH) supporters took to the Novogratz tweet and discussed the benefits of BCH as a payments rail.

“Bitcoin Cash hands down— Many BCH projects have been funded,” the bitcoin cash enthusiast Wizewizzz tweeted to Novogratz. “[Five] development teams are innovating on the scaling front [and the] community is laser-focused on adoption [and] utility in the real world. BCH aims to be sound peer to peer electronic cash— No other project comes even close.”

General Protocols’ developer Jonathan Silverblood responded to Novogratz and said that for payments, “value has to be stable by default.”

“This gives USDC and tether a clear advantage today, but it also has to be cost-efficient,” Silverblood added. “For this reason, I believe that the winner doesn’t exist yet. Out of the current contenders, I work on and believe in [bitcoin cash] BCH as the rails. In particular, I do so because they are focusing on the right use case, and are innovating in this field specifically.”

There was also bitcoin (BTC) supporters who believe BTC is a store-of-value (SoV), but that also the Lightning Network (LN) can act as a payment rail.

“Not a coin. A protocol. The SoV it routes will be agnostic. Lightning has a fair chance,” the well known data analyst Willy Woo tweeted to Novogratz in response to his payments coin tweet.

However, a great number of crypto advocates responded to Woo’s speculation and said that the LN can “only work with good UX if crypto works like the gold standard, you need to trust custodians.”

Another person added: “[The Lightning Network] is not even secure against Flood and Loot attack.” Some individuals also said layer 2 solutions will be hosted on the Ethereum (ETH) network first.

Many crypto-asset supporters believe that while a store-of-value (SoV) like gold holds a $9 trillion market capitalization, the liquid payments market is much larger.

Blockchain payment rails offering a reliable and inexpensive peer-to-peer electronic cash solution are effectively targeting the world’s cash market or the global M1. In comparison to the precious metal gold’s $9 trillion, the $100 trillion liquid payments market is 1011% larger than the SoV.