Bitcoin vs Altcoins: Which Cryptocurrency Is the Most Usable as Money?

Which cryptocurrency is the most usable as money? Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer to this question is Bitcoin, simply because it's accepted as a payment more widely than any other cryptocurrency.

In other words, Bitcoin is the most usable cryptocurrency as a method of payment, for the simple reason that any merchant that accepts any crypto is almost certain to accept Bitcoin, while the same can't be said for other coins.

"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."

Such payments cover a variety of uses - from international money transfers to business-to-business payments and merchant services - so they don't directly equal evidence that, say, Bitcoin is accepted by 86 percent of the companies that let customers pay using cryptocurrency.

Still, they indicate that Bitcoin is the most used cryptocurrency for payments, which in turn would indicate that anyone wanting to buy something with crypto would be best advised to hold on to some Bitcoin, since the system is currently geared more for dealing with Bitcoin payments than with those in any other digital currency.

In Arizona, a bill was passed in May that compels the state to "Study whether a taxpayer may pay the taxpayer's income tax liability by using a payment gateway, such as Bitcoin, Litecoin or any other cryptocurrency." A very similar bill was introduced in Georgia in late February and in Illinois in April, and while neither have been passed yet, their acceptance would be a considerable a boost for cryptocurrency in general as a means of payment - not just for Bitcoin.

Most recently, this led the Bank of International Settlements to issue a report which concluded that cryptocurrency - specifically proof-of-work currencies such as Bitcoin - aren't scalable enough to serve as money in a global economy.

It therefore can't be guaranteed that Bitcoin will be usable at an appreciably large scale, and that one of its rivals won't overtake it at a certain point as the most functional cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin Cash - which was born when developers forked away from the main Bitcoin blockchain on August 1, 2017 - now has a 32MB block size limit.

While the foregoing shows that other cryptocurrencies may hold the key to the future, it doesn't necessarily address the popular conception among some high-profile critics that Bitcoin and its rivals aren't 'real money.