Methodology & Samples

Methodology

Expert Interviews

Three non-structured guideline one-to-one expert interviews were conducted via online video meetings. Both were recorded and transcribed according to Gläser and Laudel (2009).

The choice was made to interview one academic researcher who simultaneously operates a company in the industry, one person responsible for a merchant's payment systems, and a former long-time employee of a cryptocurrency exchange. All interview partners have different backgrounds and touching points with cryptocurrency, resulting in a diverse sample.

Secondary Data

Secondary data was collected through various publicly available websites and whitepapers and analyzed with the help of an excel sheet.

Cryptocurrencies:

The primary data source is CoinMarketCap, one of the most popular websites for tracking cryptocurrencies. Multiple cross-checks with other data collecting websites were conducted to check the data accuracy. The top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap from CoinMarketCap build the initial sample.

A further selection process was conducted to reduce the initial sample of 100 to cryptocurrencies meaningful to payments. Therefore, a keyword analysis of the homepages was conducted with the main keywords being payments, currency, digital money, and fast and cheap transactions. Additionally, the self-portrayal and the primary purpose of the cryptocurrency were considered. Lastly, coins with outstanding blockchain capabilities regarding payments were selected. In this way, the original sample of 100 cryptocurrencies was reduced to 29. The upcoming Ethereum upgrade will also be included where applicable and is referred to as ETH2.

Data Sources:

Name, symbol, ranking, market cap, volume in the last 24 hours, the number of markets, Fundamental Crypto Asset Score, TokenInsight Rating, the number of wallet providers, consensus protocol, and estimated users were sourced from CoinMarketCap. The last three data fields were cross-checked with the cryptocurrencies' homepages, and the estimated users were also triangulated via Messari (2022). The staked value and the hash rate are retrieved from Staking Rewards (2022) and CoinWarz (2022), respectively. Transactions fees, block time, TPS, number of validators/nodes, and compatible chains were collected from the cryptocurrency’s homepage, chain explorers, and Messari (2022). The recommended number of block confirmations was gathered from the cryptocurrency exchanges Coinbase (2022a) and Kraken (2022). Lastly, energy consumption was collected either from the cryptocurrencies homepage, Gallersdörfer et al. (2022), Platt et al. (2021), or TRG Datacenters (2021).

Payment Gateways:

A google search on the most popular payment gateways was conducted for payment gateways, resulting in a sample of 10 frequently mentioned payment gateways.

The data for payment gateways was directly sourced from their websites. The collected data includes name, fees, FIAT conversion options, direct cryptocurrency transfer, number of supported cryptocurrencies, a list of supported cryptocurrencies, and integrations.

Samples

Payment Cryptocurrency Sample

Ticker	Name	Type	Consensus	Marketcap
BTC	Bitcoin	Coin	PoW	666,077,264,476 €
ETH	Ethereum	Coin	PoW	302,697,809,541 €
ETH2	Ethereum 2.0	Coin	PoS
USDT	Tether	Stablecoin		70,595,960,329 €
BNB	Binance Coin	Coin	dPoS-A	55,414,142,441 €
USDC	USD Coin	Stablecoin		47,287,255,537 €
XRP	XRP	Coin	XRP Consensus	32,461,679,830 €
ADA	Cardano	Coin	PoS	26,999,236,969 €
SOL	Solana	Coin	Proof of History	26,251,265,489 €
LUNA	Terra	Coin	dPoS	26,175,888,343 €
AVAX	Avalanche	Coin	PoS	18,460,010,435 €
DOT	Polkadot	Coin	PoS	16,241,546,032 €
BUSD	Binance USD	Stablecoin		16,103,744,588 €
DOGE	Dogecoin	Coin	PoW	15,105,591,737 €
UST	TerraUSD	Stablecoin		11,286,134,133 €
MATIC	Polygon	Token	PoS	10,389,743,285 €
CRO	Cronos	Coin	PoS	9,440,674,686 €
DAI	Dai	Stablecoin		8,568,289,196 €
ATOM	Cosmos	Coin	PoS	7,613,949,742 €
LTC	Litecoin	Coin	PoW	6,800,409,450 €
TRX	TRON	Coin	dPoS	5,384,997,357 €
BCH	Bitcoin Cash	Coin	PoW	5,357,425,928 €
NEAR	NEAR Protocol	Coin	PoS	5,297,263,353 €
ALGO	Algorand	Coin	PoS	5,096,790,450 €
XLM	Stellar	Coin	Stellar Consensus	4,341,808,329 €
FTM	Fantom	Coin	PoS	4,097,921,338 €
EGLD	Elrond	Coin	PoS	2,779,005,218 €
EOS	EOS	Coin	dPoS	1,904,140,383 €
ONE	Harmony	Token	PoS	1,641,917,911 €
DASH	Dash	Coin	Hybrid PoW & PoS	892,111,058 €

Top 100 Sample

Payment Gateways Sample

Name	Fees	Direct FIAT Conversion	Supported Cryptocurrencies	Type
Coinbase Commerce	1%		7	Payment Gateway (3rd Party)
Coingate	1%		70	Payment Gateway (3rd Party)
AlfaCoins	0.9899999999999999%		7	Payment Gateway (3rd Party)
BitPay	1%		13	Payment Gateway (3rd Party)
Confirmo	0.8%		2	Payment Gateway (3rd Party)
CoinPayments	0.5%		175	Payment Gateway (3rd Party)
Blockonomics	1%		2	Payment Gateway (3rd Party)
NOWPayments	0.4%		140	Payment Gateway (3rd Party)
Plisio	0.5%		8	Payment Gateway (3rd Party)
BTCPay Server	0%		5	Payment Gateway (Open Source)

Further Data used for this Website

Exchange	Website	Type
Binance	www.binance.com	Exchange
Coinbase	www.coinbase.com	Exchange
FTX	ftx.com	Exchange
CoinMarketCap	coinmarketcap.com	Data Website
Crypto.com	crypto.com	Exchange

Wallet	Website	Type
MetaMask	metamask.io	Wallet
Math Wallet	mathwallet.org	Wallet
Trust Wallet	trustwallet.com	Wallet

Chair of Strategy and Organization

© Prof. Dr. Isabell M. Welpe / Florian Knöchel

Pages

Cryptocurrency Payments

💡About

🥇Cryptocurrency Ranking

Cryptocurrency Basics

💳Payment Process

🛠️Practical Developments

🚀Future Outlook & Roadblocks

📑Factors for Adoption

💵Functions of Money

💾Technology Acceptance Model

⚙️Methodology & Samples

🔖Contributions & Sources

📩Downloads