Which Cryptocurrency Is the Most Usable as Money?

It's no secret that the majority mainstream economists do not think too extremely of cryptocurrencies. Not solely have Bitcoin, Ethereum and the rest produced the "greatest bubble in history," however they are "neither a significant method of payment nor an honest way to store capital" — at least according to the Bank of America and Nouriel "Dr Doom" Roubini, respectively.

However, while traditional financial specialists have spent infinite hours complaining that the volatility of cryptocurrencies renders them unviable as actual currency, it's possible to use them as cash in a wide range of places and to pay them on everything from pizzas to shoes.

But which cryptocurrency is the most usable as money? Well, maybe unsurprisingly, the answer to the current question is Bitcoin, just because it's accepted as a payment more widely than any other cryptocurrency. But as this analysis will show, different currencies are being increasingly accepted by retailers and companies, and given their superior measurability, they may end up overtaking the original cryptocurrency in the coming months and years.

Bitcoin accepted here

There's no single authoritative list of all the companies within the world that accept cryptocurrencies as payment, though there are a number of aggregators and websites that offer a general summary of who is accepting what. The most useful is arguably Virtual Coin Squad, since even though it does not quite boast the most extensive catalogue of merchants currently accepting cryptocurrencies, it really lists companies along with all the cryptocurrencies they settle for. As such, it provides a transparent insight into which cryptocurrency is the most generally used as a method of payment.

54 major companies presently accept cryptocurrencies, in keeping with Virtual Coin Squad (although the real variety is much higher), and only two of them — MazeFit (sportswear) and shiny Leaf (cosmetics) — do not accept Bitcoin. the other 53 – as well as Microsoft, Expedia, Mozilla, and Shopify – all accept BTC, whereas 25 accept Litecoin, 13 accept Ethereum, 14 accept Bitcoin cash, 12 accept Monero, and 15 accept Dogecoin. In different words, Bitcoin is the most usable cryptocurrency as a technique of payment, for the easy reason that any merchant that accepts any crypto is nearly certain to accept Bitcoin, while the same cannot be said for different coins.

Of course, a list of only 55 companies is not specifically exhaustive, however there are alternative, more extensive resources which corroborate this picture. Use Bitcoin is a directory of over 5,000 businesses and retailers that accept Bitcoin (and other cryptocurrencies), and while these are not visible  in a table that displays which merchants accept which currency, dipping in and out of specific listings reveals a lot of the same principle: virtually all of them accept Bitcoin, but most of them do not accept other cryptocurrencies.

The same goes with the data provided by Coinmap, which allows users to search a map of the world for businesses that accept cryptocurrencies. Here, a search of new york city, for example, reveals 136 such businesses within the central area of the city — overlapping Manhattan and brooklyn. many of these deal solely in Bitcoin, such as a number of delicatessens — e.g. Brooklyn's Tony deli, big Boy deli, and G Line deli — that house their own Bitcoin ATMs.

Admittedly, a growing number of businesses worldwide are currently accepting more than just Bitcoin, as explained to Cointelegraph by Bach Nguyen, the community manager at the Prague-based SatoshiLabs, which runs the Coinmap website:


"If I can speak for Prague and Czech Republic, we have been witnessing wider acceptance of cryptocurrencies. Places that have accepted Bitcoin before started accepting Litecoin or Ethereum. There are even ATMs which offer Bitcoin Cash. Though, Bitcoin is still dominant —  it is the cryptocurrency that gets implemented first."


Not only does this growth in acceptance of altcoins testify to the growing public familiarity with crypto, however it also results from the increasing prominence of cryptocurrency payment services tailored for businesses — such as Coinbase Commerce, which launched in Feb and that allows merchants to accept payments in multiple digital currencies. However, such merchants still stay in the minority — for the most part — once again signalling that if you would like to pay your way though the world using only one cryptocurrency, your best bet remains Bitcoin.